Recent March 02 Presidential poll that elected Dmitry Medvedev, 42, a lawyer and Deputy Premier, as proposed by his mentor President Vladimir Putin, as the new president of UNSC veto-powered Russia from May for the next five years as the most acceptable person of Russian voters to lead this one of the most powerful nation, has shown that Russian power is united and is on the rise and will further assert its power globally. But the poll has given rise to sever criticisms of irregularities. Soviet Russia had no problems mainly because the constitution had provided for only one candidate for a every contest, big or small, but they had the right to recall the candidates if their services were found unsatisfactory. Post-communist Russia has permitted multi-cornered contests from bottom to top. President Vladimir Putin got elected twice in 2000 and 2004 and his ratings have been gong up since he took over the reigns of the Kremlin. There have been severe criticisms that Moscow does not really promote multi-contests. The most crucial issues being debated the world over is about the deliberately weakened opposition in Russia. And many argue that polls in Russia are just an eye-wash.

Campaign was seen totally one-sided affair and the election was devoid of real choices. Only 300 international election observers monitored the 96,000 voting stations across Russia's 11 time zones. Some 450,000 police and troops deployed nationwide to ensure the voting proceeded calmly. With nearly 100% of the ballots counted final results showed that Medvedev had received 70.23 percent of the vote. The March poll also has given rise to malpractices of a sort in the campaign and poll, which the world monitoring agencies and opposition parties have raised.

Most Western election observers did not monitor the vote, citing obstruction by the authorities. Relatively few independent international observers were on hand to monitor the vote. Observers from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe said that unfair access to the media put into question the vote's overall fairness. The influential Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe(OSCE), which has sent hundreds of observers to past Russian elections, refused to monitor the vote, saying Russian authorities had imposed such tight restrictions that its monitors could not work in a meaningful way.