MOSCOW, September 28. /TASS/. A decision of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) against sending its monitors to the Russian parliamentary elections earlier this month can be viewed as a premediated attempt to discredit the election campaign in the country, Chairman of the ruling United Russia Party and Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview with Russia Today television channel.
"It was certainly an attempt to discredit the election campaign in advance," Medvedev said. "This is obvious. It was an open and cynical attempt."
Russia’s former president and prime minister Medvedev recalled that the organization used to summon in the past up to 500 monitoring inspectors at the level of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).
"We are living in difficult times now. We told them that it’s too much, guys," Medvedev said. "You have dispatched 30 to the United States. You are dispatching 50 on the average. Why do you request the presence of 500?"
"Let us reduce it to standard norms and then you can come and ‘welcome’ as we say," he continued. "However, their reply was ‘No,’ ‘, Aut Caesar, aut nihil,’ or ‘everything of nothing,’" Medvedev said.
"Obviously, a landmine was planted immediately, which meant that the elections had been doomed to be pronounced as illegitimate from the very start," Medvedev added.
Elections to the 8th Russian State Duma (lower house) were held over a period of three days - on September 17, 18 and 19. After processing 100% of the voting results, the nation’s ruling party, United Russia, clinched 49.82% of the ballots on the party list. The Communist Party came in second (18.93%), while the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia garnered 7.55%, A Just Russia — For Truth got 7.46% and New People reaped 5.32%.