President Vladimir Putin was accused by a Russian liberal party of abusing his authority in the parliamentary election due to be held Sunday.

Putin is in the head of the list of candidates of the United Russia in the poll. The pro-Kremlin party should win the election by a landslide giving Putin the chance to exert political influence even after stepping down as president.

Putin appealed on Thursday to the nation to vote for United Russia using major television channels, Reuters reports. This brought critics from his political opponents saying that he abuses of his role as president to support just one party.

Sergei Mitrokhin, deputy chairman of the liberal Yabloko party said: "I complained to the Central Election Commission about the president's campaign speech on Thursday. I raised the question with the CEC on whether this speech had been paid for from United Russia's election fund. From my point of view, this was a flagrant violation of the legislation, an abuse of office in the interests of one party. I also demanded that other leaders, in particular Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky, be given the same amount of time on Channels One, Two and Four."

Voters give credit to Putin for having restored stability and economic growth after the 1990s.

According to opinion polls, his party will gather 60 percent of the vote on Sunday.

Even though Putin wants fair election, his opponents are saying that is ruled out due to the fact that the air waves and media are controlled by Kremlin and United Russia giving little access to it to opposition parties.

Reports from all over Russia showed that employers pushed the people to vote on Sunday threatening them with disciplinary action.

Russian law says that voting is voluntary.

Putin’s speech was defended by Vladimir Churov, Central Election Commission Chairman, on grounds that as one of the candidates for United Russia, he has the right to publicly campaign for it.

The Communists are the only party apart from United Russia, as the opinion polls show, that will reach the threshold of 7 percent to qualify for seats in the new Duma.

According to Putin, if the voters choose United Russia they will choose for "stability and continuity" rather than the chaos of the 1990s.