Number of electoral violations in Russia doubles


Candidates from the authorities have won the Russian gubernatorial elections, while the loyal opposition has been elected to the Moscow City Duma. In Russia, the results of a single day of voting became known. The results from the public movement to control the elections are disappointing: observers claim numerous violations and note the low turnout of voters.

Moscow City Duma deputies were elected with a low number of voters — the turnout was 21.07 percent.

The protests caused by the refusal to allow several dozens of opponents of the authorities to participate in the “Duma” elections did not subside for almost 1.5 months in the capital. While the United Russia rating was going down, many party candidates took part in the elections as self-nominated politicians. Alexei Navalny, an opposition activist, called their bluff: he created a page that showed voters “who is who” and urged not to vote for them.

“People can perfectly figure it out themselves, and this is some kind of encroachment on the freedom of choice,” say voters from Moscow.

Candidates from the opposition parties were elected to the Moscow City Duma in 20 districts out of 45. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) — in 13, Fair Russia — in 3, supporters and members of Yabloko — in 4. Thus, the majority remained in favour of United Russia candidates.

Andrei Kolesnikov, Carnegie Moscow Center:

“The Communist Party is the party in power just like the United Russia party, the LDPR and Fair Russia are. We will include Yabloko here to a lesser extent, since it is still a real party. It turns out that the main beneficiaries of what happened are the Communists. Communists are part of the government, governed by the Presidential Administration, otherwise they would not have been included in the State Duma.

The Communists and the LDPR also made it to the city parliaments in large numbers. And the governors in 16 regions were predominantly those who served as former governors. Independent observation concluded that the number of violations doubled this year.

Vitaly Averin, the regional network of the ‘Golos’ movement:

“The twofold increase applies to both the entire campaign and the irregularities on election day. If we talk about trends, the number of violations related to the rights of observers and members of commissions has increased”.

Complaints of observers remained ignored. The next single day of voting will be held in Russia on September 13.

Yuliya Tselpuk/IR belsat.eu

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