Not so advanced – Picture of the Day – Kommersant

Candidates for municipal deputies of Moscow from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation filed a whole series of lawsuits with the courts to remove their competitors from the Communists of Russia party from the elections, many of whom also turned out to be their namesakes. The applicants refer to violations committed during the nomination of candidates, which jeopardize the status of all 700 nominees of the “Communists of Russia”. Opponents of the Communist Party claim that they have everything “according to the charter.”

On August 31, the Babushkinsky Court of Moscow registered the lawsuit of Yury Dashkov, a candidate for the council of deputies of the Yuzhnoye Medvedkovo district from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, who is seeking the removal of his namesake Maria Dashkova, nominated by the Communist Party of Russia (KPKR), from the elections. The communist claims that gross violations were committed during the nomination of his opponent. In particular, the decision to nominate was made by the plenum of the Committee of the Moscow City Branch of the Communist Party of the Kyrgyz Republic and approved by the resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Kyrgyz Republic, although, in accordance with the requirements of the law, the congress of the Communists of Russia or the conference of the regional branch of the party had to nominate candidates. Elena Gulicheva, who is running for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in the Lyublino district, filed a similar lawsuit against her rival Zinaida Gulina (KPKR).

In total, the capital’s candidates for municipal deputies from the Communist Party filed more than a dozen lawsuits to remove opponents from the Communist Party from the elections, Magomet Bidzhev, a lawyer for the Moscow City Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, told Kommersant. In his opinion, the violations committed by the “Communists of Russia” during the nomination provide grounds for removing all 700 candidates registered from them from the elections. However, due to lack of time, the Communists focused primarily on their “doubles” – and, according to the lawyer, there are at least 40 such among the registered candidates from the KPKR.

The shortcomings made by the KKKR when nominating candidates became known literally on the last day when the law allows filing a lawsuit to remove candidates from registration (August 31), and almost by accident – from the materials submitted to the court on one of the electoral disputes, said Mr. Bidzhev . After the liquidation of the institution of members of election commissions with the right to consultative vote, the opposition’s access to the documents on the basis of which the commissions make decisions turned out to be very difficult, the lawyer explains.

Yaroslav Sidorov, First Deputy Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, told Kommersant that his party expected such steps from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, but they are sure that in a legal sense, “there can be no claims” against their candidates. “They (KPRF.— “b”) have been doing this for more than ten years, so this is not news to us. Why they waited until the last day is not very clear. I would advise them to carefully study our charter and understand that all the nominations we made were within its framework. There is no judicial legal prospect for removing our candidates,” Mr. Sidorov assured.

Electoral lawyer Garegin Mitin, however, believes that the candidates from the Communist Party still have a chance to remove their rivals from the elections. If a candidate was nominated by an unauthorized body, then this, of course, is the basis for canceling his registration, the expert confirms. But the law still unequivocally requires that the appropriate decision be made by a congress, conference or general meeting of the organization. The only exception is possible for by-elections or by-elections, as well as for local elections – in the absence of an appropriate structural unit, Mr. Mitin emphasizes. He also notes that in the case of a tough approach of election commissions to candidates, the basis for refusing registration may be not only the wrong subject of nomination, but even a violation of the procedure for such a procedure. For example, in the municipal elections in the Arkhangelsk region, the Party of Affairs was denied registration due to the fact that the ballot box for nominating candidates was not located in the visibility zone of the meeting participants, and the counting commission consisted of only one candidate, the lawyer recalls.

Anastasia Kornya, Kira Heifetz