Election on September 8th: municipal filters don’t work

By Vestnik Kavkaza

September 8th is a unified voting day in Russia. 7000 elections will take place in regions; in 8 regions governors will be elected; in 16 – deputies to legislative assemblies. 54 political parties are participating in the election campaigns.

The Moscow mayoral candidates are the temporary acting mayor Sergey Sobyanin, Ivan Melnikov (the Communist Party), Nikolai Levichev (A Just Russia), Mikhail Degtyarev (LDPR), Sergey Mitrokhin (Yabloko), and Alexei Navalny (RPR-PARNAS).

A few days ahead of the elections Mikhail Prokhorov’s party “Civil Platform” prepared a report devoted to election campaigns in regions in 2012-2013. It says that there is only “an illusion of competition” in elections, while candidates who oppose the authorities are still kept out.

One of the leaders of “Platform”, the plenipotentiary envoy of the Russian government in courts of last resort, Mikhail Barshchevsky, stated that the municipal filter wouldn’t work: “72 political parties are registered in Russia. To pass the municipal filter in Moscow, you must get the signatures of 100 MPs. The law forbids a deputy giving his vote to two different candidates.

Here's the arithmetic: 100 signatures are demanded; there are 1500 deputies in Moscow. How many candidates can get signatures, maximum? 15! How many parties do we have? 72! It is easy to calculate that 1/6 of the Russian political system has no right to take part in elections in Moscow, according to the law.”

Barshchevsky mentioned another unreasonable element of the election campaign: “Navalny calls United Russia “a party of cheaters and thieves.” Sobyanin is the leader of the Moscow organization of United Russia, even though he is presented as an independent candidate; he addresses municipal deputies to give their votes to Navalny in part. “The party of cheaters and thieves,” as Navalny calls it, gives him their votes and he accepts them.

It means candidates from “the party of cheaters and thieves,” as Navalny calls it, agree to work with Navalny. And Navalny, who accepts the votes, gives an agreement on working with them.”

“The source of power in Russia is people,” Barshchevsky continues. “If a candidate for deputy has collected the signatures of people, who has a right to cancel the signatures of those people? The source of power is the people. They tell me: “Yes, but a deputy is a representative of the people.” But it is an indirect will expression, while collecting signatures is a direct will expression of people. And then other people in elections can agree with this part of people and vote for the candidate or disagree with the part of people and vote for another candidate; but the people’s will expression shouldn’t have a filter. Candidates can have a filter, but not people’s will expression.

If Sobyan didn’t ask deputies to sign for other candidates, the elections could fail because none of candidates would have enough signatures for participation. Elections cannot be held, if only one candidate takes part in them. So, anyone who goes in power has to ask someone else to go together with him, i.e. to ask municipal deputies to give their votes not to him, but to his opponents. Isn’t it a fiction?”