ID :
85947
Sat, 10/24/2009 - 19:15
Auther :

Local authorities 'went too far' to secure voting results-analysts

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MOSCOW, October 24 (By Itar-Tass World Service writer Lyudmila
Alexandrova) -- The local elections that were held in most regions of
Russia on October 11 proved a far more significant political event than
the authorities had anticipated. Normally, elections of such rank are
forgotten the day after. This time it all happened otherwise. The more
time passes since the polling day, the greater the political emotion over
the event.
The elections to Moscow's city legislature and to the local bodies of
power and self-government in all other regions have been declared as
valid. The legislators have received their mandates. In Moscow, well-known
for its opposition sentiment, the members of the pro-Kremlin United Russia
party received 32 seats in a 35-seat legislature, and the Communists, only
three. Neither Yabloko, which has customarily enjoyed strong electoral
support in the city, nor the Liberal Democrats, who, according to
sociologists, could well count on a decent performance, let alone "the
other ruling party" (a term often used in relation to Fair Russia),
managed to clear the seven-percent qualification hurdle.
Scandals over what the critics claim were multiple cases of vote
rigging keep raging. The oppositional factions in the State Duma staged a
walkout and even boycotted sessions for a while. Also, the opposition
parties have been filing lawsuits in courts of law and holding
demonstrations of protest.
The main reason is simple. The Opposition and the skeptical electorate
suspect the local authorities plainly rigged the election returns.
Although nobody doubts the United Russia party's victory by and large,
many are angry even the tiniest opposition has now been reduced to nothing.
Oddly enough, as many analysts say, neither the Kremlin, nor the
United Russia party itself, have ever fancied achieving this sort of aim.
The local authorities, first and foremost, the local election commissions,
just wanted to be dead sure nothing goes wrong. And they 'sort of overdid
it'. After vote-counting at Moscow's polling station 192, where the leader
of the Yabloko party, Sergei Mitrokhin and three members of his family had
cast ballots, it somehow turned out that Yabloko collected no votes at all.
Mitrokhin invited everybody to regard this as the brightest example of
crude falsification and filed a complaint at the Moscow city election
commission. There his demand met with support and was handed over to a
court of law, which ordered vote recounting. In this way in its struggle
for declaring the election returns from the Moscow City Duma's elections
rigged the Opposition last Thursday attained its first victory. Mitrokhin
said he hoped that such decisions would be made in relation to eighteen
other polling stations.
Oppositional parties have formally presented copies of observers'
protocols in which the figures differ from the official results. At some
polling stations the discrepancies are significant, indeed - tens of
thousands of votes.
Yabloko, the LDPR and the Communists presented 46 copies of election
protocols, says a member of the Moscow Election Commission, Rimma
Kuznetsova. Disagreements with the official ones were recognized in 38
cases and now they will be sent to the prosecutor's office for examination.
In the meantime, the speaker of the State Duma, chairman of the United
Russia's supreme council, Boris Gryzlov, said he was certain that even if
all protests by the opposition were sustained, the election returns would
change by a tiny one percentage point.
Political scientist Mikhail Tulsky agrees. The daily Vedomosti quotes
him as saying that in Moscow there are 3,276 polling stations, and
political parties have been trying to protest election returns from less
than ten percent of them. Even if vote recounting shows the true result,
United Russia's percentage in Moscow will go down by no more than 3-4
percent, while the result of each of the parties that have failed to enter
the Moscow City Duma will grow by 0.5-1 percent.
Even the LDRP, with its 6.1 percent, is unlikely to clear the
7-percent hurdle after recounting.
In the meantime, the CPRF and the LDPR have demanded the resignation
of Central Election Commission chief Vladimir Churov. The Communists also
demand creation of special panels of inquiry under the president and the
State Duma.
The oppositional factions in the State Duma (the CPRF, the LDPR and
Fair Russia) on October 14 left the conference hall in protest of what
they saw as election violations. The Liberal Democrats and the Fair Russia
agreed to return two days after. The Communists stood firm for a week.
Analysts say the authorities, of course, had not wished to achieve
elections returns like these at any cost, let alone hopelessly spoil
relations with the Opposition.
"There will be no fundamental revision of the election returns," said
political scientist Alexander Budberg on the Ekho Moskvy radio station.
"But returns from some polling stations may be recounted - just to
demonstrate that crude falsifications are very unwelcome. Otherwise some
may have the impression that rigging is easy, and then it will make no
sense to hold any elections at all."
"In any case the authorities' position today looks rather silly. I am
absolutely certain that even without such daring and crude intervention by
regional election commissions the ruling party would achieve quite
acceptable results," he said.
"'True, nobody has told us to rig election returns. But why shouldn't
we take a try?' some smart guys must have thought. They no longer ask for
instructions from above. And, bearing in mind that not a single person has
ever been punished for any falsification in the ruling party's favor, they
must have decided they have a free hand. And they did what they did with
great pleasure."
"The United Russia party has claimed all the way it can do without any
Opposition pretty well. That the Opposition is of little use, anyway,"
says the Internet periodical Politcom.ru. "In reality, strenuous work has
begun at some offices in the Kremlin and reception rooms of Duma members
for the sake of returning the dissidents to the fold of political
stability."

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