Russian President Vladimir Putin has given up his lawmaker's mandate in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, the Central Election Commission (CEC) said on Thursday.

 

"Vladimir Putin has given up his lawmaker's mandate to Sergei Kapkov, who was on United Russia's regional list and ran his election campaign in the Magadan region and the Chukotka Autonomous Area," secretary of the CEC Sergei Konkin was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying.

 

Konkin disclosed that the CEC had received 101 applications from winning parliamentary candidates wishing to relinquish their mandates in favor of their colleagues.

 

The United Russia Party, led by Putin, scored a landslide victory in the Dec. 2 parliamentary elections, obtaining 64.3 percent of the vote and 315 parliamentary seats out of the 450 Duma seats.

 

According to the law, any candidate must either reject the mandate or confirm their position as a State Duma deputy within five days of the official results of the polls being made public.

 

The final official results unveiled on Saturday showed that the Communist Party obtained 57 seats, the Liberal Democratic Party 40seats and Fair Russia 38 seats.

 

After the 2003 parliamentary election, all state and government officials on the United Russia Party ticket rejected their mandates and kept their previous posts, which many voters considered a deception.

 

(Xinhua News Agency December 14, 2007)