The general is more reliable than the private – Newspaper Kommersant No. 142 (7343) of 08/08/2022
[ad_1]
The capital’s electoral commissions have completed the registration of candidates for municipal deputies of Moscow. According to preliminary data (the final figures will be published by the Moscow City Electoral Commission early this week), major political parties have passed this stage with virtually no losses. The exceptions were the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and Yabloko, both the election commissions and the security forces had complaints against some of their nominees. The majority of registration denials are due to self-nominated candidates who went to the polls as part of district teams of activists or used the help of opposition platforms to prepare candidates.
The results of the registration of candidates for the municipal elections in Moscow, which will be held on September 9-11, will be summed up at the beginning of the week, preliminary on August 8-9, Dmitry Reut, deputy head of the Moscow City Electoral Committee, told Kommersant. He is sure that compared to 2017, the current campaign is taking place with much fewer complaints and violations.
The final number of registered candidates has not yet been made public, and some of them continue to challenge the removal from the elections in the courts. At a meeting of the Moscow City Electoral Committee at the end of last week, Mr. Reut assured that the commission thoroughly examines each complaint. He also emphasized that the applicants do not deny the facts that the election commissions reveal, but they interpret them in their own way. “The electoral legislation does not allow for ambiguous interpretation. The arguments on which we and the territorial election commissions base our decisions have been repeatedly examined by the Constitutional Court, and the court did not find these norms unconstitutional. The only reason for changing the decision of the commission is if the commission violated the law, the law does not provide other grounds, ”Dmitry Reut explained the position of the Moscow City Electoral Committee regarding the removal of candidates.
Almost all parliamentary parties managed to keep their nominees almost in full force. Recall that in the September elections in Moscow, 1,417 mandates are contested in the councils of deputies of 125 out of 146 municipal districts. United Russia nominated 1,417 candidates, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation – 984, A Just Russia – For Truth – 626, New People – 580, LDPR – 381.
The Communist Party of the Russian Federation suffered relatively large losses among the parliamentary parties: according to the leader of the capital’s communists, Moscow City Duma deputy Nikolai Zubrilin, 872 candidates were registered at the end of last week, nine were rejected and five more are in the process of registration. Most of the Communists were denied registration for shortcomings in the submitted documents, but some were removed from the elections and by court order. For example, the leader of the Communist Party team in Cheryomushki, the current municipal deputy Elena Selkova, was found guilty by the court of demonstrating the symbols of extremist organizations (part 1 of article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses). Recall that the punishment under this article that has entered into force deprives a citizen of a passive electoral right for a year. The capital’s communists withdrew a certain number of their nominees from the elections on their own, convicting them of “collaboration with the district authorities.”
After registration, the Yabloko party, which had acted as the main competitor of the parliamentary opposition parties, also lost several candidates after registration. Of its 180 nominees, 174 have reached the registration stage, of which 155 have already been registered, four are awaiting registration results, and 15 have been rejected. The largest number of refusals to Yabloko was associated with accusations of demonstrating the symbols of “Smart Voting” – the corresponding protocols were drawn up for seven candidates.
Somewhat more often, self-nominated candidates were removed from the elections, including current municipal deputies who intended to run as part of old or new teams. The list of reasons for refusing registration, just like in the 2021 State Duma elections, included “involvement in the activities of an extremist organization”, which was confirmed by participation in last year’s rallies in defense of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and the publication of posts in his support. For example, for this reason, the deputies Konstantin Yankauskas (Zyuzino district), Denis Shenderovich (Kuntsevo) and the deputy of the Ostankinsky district Sergey Tsukasov (he oversaw one of the most famous platforms for training independent candidates – the “Deputy Academy”) were removed from the race. Nevertheless, in general, the opposition platforms showed good results: for example, the “Nomination” project of Zyuzino deputy Alexander Zamyatin and former candidate for the State Duma from the Communist Party Mikhail Lobanov reported on the registration of 91 out of 110 nominees, and the team of National Democrat Roman Yuneman – 51 out of 60 (however, the authors of the project later refused to support the nine already registered candidates, since they did not pass the “additional internal filter”).
The coordinator of legal assistance in criminal cases of the OVD-Info project (included by the Ministry of Justice in the register of foreign agents) Anton Taroyants notes that so far the number of withdrawals of candidates for ties with extremist structures (at least five cases) is significantly less than in last year’s elections to the State Duma (more 30), but this year a comparable number of refusals (37) are related to allegations of displaying extremist symbols. Many deputies are regional leaders of public opinion, who usually call for someone to vote in elections, and most often they campaigned for candidates supported by Smart Voting, Mr. Taroyants says.
According to political analyst Alexander Asafov, there are few “political” refusals to register for this campaign – about 40. “The vast majority of refusals are errors in documents, failure to provide documents, errors in signatures or their insufficient number, and so on. In my opinion, it was not the new legal circumstances that affected, but the lack of centralized legal support, which in 2017 was provided to self-nominated candidates by Maxim Katz, Dmitry Gudkov (curators of the United Democrats project.— “Kommersant“) and others,” the expert notes. In his opinion, groups of candidates around individual leaders are now “encapsulated and there is no broad legal assistance,” although many have declared its existence.
[ad_2]
Source link