The Russian President, Vladimir Putin on Friday signed a new Law in in Russia’s constitution that will allow him to stay in power until 2036.
This comes after he claimed victory in a referendum on the issue with 78 per cent of the vote, amid allegations of widespread vote rigging.
According to Dailymail online, Sergey Shpilkin, a renowned independent electoral researcher from Russia, estimated that as many as 20million ballots cast in Wednesday’s vote were falsified.
During the last presidential election he estimated that 10million votes were falsified, hinting at the potential scale of the operation.
The amendments come into force. They come into force, without overstating it, at the people’s will,’ Putin said after he signed the order.
‘We made this important decisions together, as a country.’
As well as extending Putin’s term limits, the alterations will outlaw same-sex marriage and mention the ‘belief in God as a core value’ in Russian society.
The new constitution will also highlight the importance of Russian laws over all international laws.
Putin proposed amending the constitution in January and insisted on putting the language on his eligibility for office and the other topics up to a nationwide vote.
The vote was not legally required because the changes had already been approved by parliament and rubber-stamped by the country’s Constitutional Court.
speaker of the State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin Russia’s lower house of parliament, said that lawmakers would start working on bills implementing the amendments immediately, without taking their traditional summer break.