Sergei Sobyanin wins Moscow mayor election

PanARMENIAN.Net - Acting Moscow head Sergei Sobyanin gained 51.15 percent of votes in Sunday, Sept 8, mayoral election in the Russian capital after 98.03 percent of ballots were counted, the election committee said, according to RIA Novosti

His main rival, opposition leader Alexei Navalny, follows him with 27.37 percent of the votes.

Speaking on early Monday with his supporters, Sobyanin praised the transparency of the election and said that the possible runoff was unlikely.

“Judging by the percentage of the counted ballots we can say with a high certainty that there will be no second round,” he said.

Communist Party candidate Ivan Melnikov secured 10.73 percent of the votes, while Yabloko’s candidate Sergei Mitrokhin and Mikhail Degtyarev from LDPR received 3.54 percent and 2.87 percent respectively.

The Moscow election - first in a decade and marked by the turnout of 33 percent despite media buzz and massive campaigns by most of the hopefuls - was the most important of regional and municipal elections that took place in Russia Sunday.

Sobyanin’s main rival, pro-democracy movement leader Alexei Navalny, obtained 27.3% .

He has called for a run-off, saying the results were "deliberately falsified". Navalny said he had won enough votes to force a second round and that the count had been marred by "many serious violations".

Navalny had earlier warned that if he was denied a run-off, he would "appeal to the citizens and ask them to take to the streets of Moscow".