Yabloko Liberal Party candidate Boris Vishnevsky will remain in the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly later this month. Russian parliamentary elections will be held from 17 to 19 September, during which the regions will elect members of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament. Several regional and municipal leaders will also be elected.
CNN has contacted the other two candidates for comment, but has not yet received a response.
“Of course, this is a political fraud without a doubt. They are trying to confuse citizens into taking one of the forgeries from the original,” Vishnevsky told CNN on Tuesday.
Its sole purpose is to get voters to make a mistake and tick the wrong box, the politician is convinced.
“Obviously, there is no other way to prevent me [from winning]”, Says Vishnevsky, when asked why he thinks this happened.
In the list of candidates for deputies of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg there are three Boris Vishnevskys running in the same district number 2 of St. Petersburg, Vasileostrovsky constituency.
The only difference is their patronymic names, usually derived from a father’s name. In addition to Yabloko party candidate Vishnevsky Boris Lazarevich, 65, Vishnevsky Boris Gennadievich, 43, and Vishnevsky Boris Ivanovich, 59. The last two candidates are running as independents.
For the latter two, the electoral commission’s website brackets its old names: Shmelev Alexey Gennadievich and Bykov Victor Ivanovich. It seems that they only decided to keep their patronymic names.
Vice President of the Yabloko Party, Vishnevsky calls himself an opposition candidate and says Yabloko is the only opposition party running in these elections.
“All the other parties are Putin’s parties in different suits,” he says. “They all support Putin’s policy in one way or another.” In St. Petersburg, Vishnevsky is one of the main opponents of the current city governor, Alexander Beglov.
“Apparently, my chances of winning are estimated to be very high, so now they have to resort to these dirty plans. This speaks to a high assessment of my merits and the level of support I have in the city. “You know, that’s not the way to fight weak candidates,” Vishnevsky told CNN.
Pamfilova called these campaign media a “mockery,” but said the law allows Boris Vishnevsky’s namesakes to run in the election.
According to Pamfilova, the electoral committee does not have the legal means to fire the candidates, but would prepare a proposal for new lawmakers “so that these shameful cases simply do not happen.”
The St. Petersburg Electoral Commission said only full homonymous names with the same first name, last name and patronymic are required to indicate their names before the ballot.
This strategy is unprecedented in Russian electoral battles.
It is believed that this method was first applied in 1998 in the elections to the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg when two people with the same name ran against Sergey Mironov.
Since then, on several occasions, namesakes have clashed in the same districts of various regions of Russia.
“We have already received several complaints and note that, unfortunately, in several regions a raw technology of cloning various types of doubles is used. We already have statements from party leaders who are outraged,” Pamfilova told state media in July. .