Candidates will be taken at their word – Newspaper Kommersant No. 35 (7480) dated 03/01/2023

On Tuesday, the Presidium of the United Russia General Council held a meeting dedicated to the primaries, which will also be held in the new territories. For participants in the preliminary voting in these regions, party members provided for a number of exceptions to the general rules. For example, “candidates for candidates” will need to submit a statement of unwillingness to be a citizen of Ukraine, as well as indicate information about the absence of a criminal record without providing a certificate from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Under the current conditions, they simply will not be able to check the data on a criminal record, as United Russia members themselves explained.

On February 28, the Presidium of the United Russia (ER) General Council decided to launch the preliminary voting procedure before the September elections from March 1. It is through the primaries that United Russia traditionally selects its candidates for elections at various levels. “Our comrades who are now at the forefront, these are both regular servicemen and mobilized, volunteers, even volunteers,” said Andrei Turchak, Secretary of the United Russia General Council, at the meeting. According to him, the party members will consider how it is comfortable and most convenient to ensure their participation in the procedure.

For the new regions, United Russia has provided a special procedure for conducting a preliminary vote, which was described by the head of the executive committee of the United Russia and the deputy secretary of its general council, Alexander Sidyakin. So, if all over the country the primaries will be held exclusively in electronic form, then in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, a mixed form will be used, including ordinary polling stations, and somewhere the widespread use of mobile voting. “The situations are different. Somewhere there are liberated territories, somewhere everything is very difficult, and there we will act according to a special procedure,” Mr. Sidyakin explained. According to him, in the “newly liberated territories”, such as Soledar and Artemovsk, voting will be organized only with the help of portable ballot boxes.

In addition, in order to participate in the primaries as electors, residents of the new regions will not necessarily have a Russian passport in their hands – it is enough to apply for one. Concessions are also provided for candidates. Usually, primaries participants must have only one – Russian – citizenship, renounce foreign financial instruments by the time of voting and provide a certificate of no criminal record. But representatives of the new regions, as Alexander Sidyakin emphasized, “for objective reasons” will be able to limit themselves to statements that “the candidate took all possible measures” to get rid of foreign bank accounts, and about his “unwillingness to be a citizen of Ukraine” .

As for a criminal record, here the candidates themselves will have to inform about its absence, and in this matter they are ready to take their word for it. “We will prove it (information about the criminal record.— “b”) objectively we cannot,” Mr. Sidyakin explained. But representatives of the new subjects of the Russian Federation will not be exempted from posting videos with their participation on the Internet resource of the primaries. “Just like throughout the country, candidates who apply must submit at least two pieces of video content so that we understand who they are,” Alexander Sidyakin said.

Andrey Vinokurov