Three weeks before Russian parliamentary, regional and local elections, President Vladimir Putin’s party, United Russia, has the lowest turnout since. its foundation, which reflects the great wear and tear of the pro-government formation.
According to a poll conducted last week by the Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM, for its acronym in Russian) only 26.4% of Russians are willing to vote for the party of the head of the Kremlin, when five years ago polls gave him 43.3%.
However, United Russia (UK) leads in the polls, followed by the Communist Party with 17.2%, which would consolidate as a second force, ahead of the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party with 9%, while which ranks fourth in the Russia Fair-Patriots of Russia-For the Truth bloc, with 6.7%.
However, despite polls showing a fairly widespread fight, virtually no one doubts that United Russia will take a comfortable absolute majority in the State Duma, the Russian Chamber of Deputies.
And it is that only half of the 450 deputies of the Duma are chosen by lists of parties; the other half is elected in majority constituencies in which officialdom is traditionally imposed very widely.
SHIELD AGAINST THE PARTICIPATION OF OPPONENTS
But not only the electoral system favors RO, as prominent opponents have been marginalized from these elections by the application of a series of laws passed recently and which have been denounced as an attack on civil rights.
According to electoral law expert Vladimir Shveda, one of the main goals of legal innovations is to prevent candidates linked to opposition leader Aleksei Navalni, who is currently serving a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence, from being on the ballot paper.
To do this, the jurist explained, in a short time a fairly effective system was created, but absolutely unconstitutional, as it deprives of their rights to be elected citizens who have not been sentenced to prison terms.
It is enough for a court to declare an organization extremist, as happened with the structures created by Navalni, for all the people who, even before this court decision, have participated, in one way or another, to be violated. their right to be elected.
Among the most notorious cases is the annulment of the candidacy for deputy of the Duma of Lev Shlosberg, leader of the Liberal party Yábloko, by decision of a Muscovite court that considered that the politician was linked to the Navalni organizations.
“As president of the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) I am obliged to comply with the court decision (…) But personally I can not believe that he (Shlosberg) has any link with extremists,” said Ela Panfílova after learning of the sentence .
Also prominent communist leader Pavel Grudinin, Putin’s rival in the 2018 presidential race, was left out of the election race after his ex-wife reported that he owned shares abroad.
THE PANDEMIC LEAVES ITS FOOTPRINT
Due to the pandemic of the coronavirus, voting will be extended from September 16 to 19 to avoid congestion, and in seven entities of the Russian Federation, including Moscow, voters will be able to vote online.
This circumstance poses an added difficulty for observers who will monitor the clean-up of the elections.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) refused to send its observers after Russia limited its number to 60 for health reasons.
The OSCE intended to send 80 long-term observers to Russia and another 420 to monitor the final days of the campaign and the vote itself.
In the elections from 16 to 19 September, in addition to the deputies of the State Duma, 12 heads of federated entities, 23 regional parliaments and 11 capital councils of federated entities will be elected.
“In this election they seek to show that they control the situation, and therefore are a test for the regional elites of their loyalty to the Kremlin,” Russian political scientist Dmitry Oreshkin told Moscow’s Eco station.
For the Kremlin, he added, the important thing is that they give the right election result. “How to get that figure is their problem. But no one investigated and no one will be allowed to investigate,” he ruled.