Marriage without registration

Mikhail Kasyanov's chances of becoming a presidential candidate are approaching zero

On March 2, 2008, Russians will have to choose their president from only four candidates for the highest government post. This can be said with almost complete confidence after yesterday's meeting of the Central Election Commission. Let us remind you that now the Central Election Commission is deciding the political fate of two self-nominated candidates . The leader of the Democratic Party, Andrei Bogdanov, will apparently receive the coveted candidate registration tomorrow. Yesterday, commission members signed the final protocol on verifying 400 thousand of the 2.1 million voter signatures they collected in their support. As Mr. Bogdanov himself stated, experts identified 3.12% of marriages among them, with the permitted upper limit of 5%, so the registration of the leader of the democrats is actually a resolved issue. But the leader of the Russian “People's Democratic Union” (VDU), ex-Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, apparently, will have to give up his presidential ambitions.

In the signature sheets of the ex-prime minister, 15.57% of unreliable and invalid autographs were found. Now a second sample of 200 thousand autographs will be made for verification. “Suddenly it will turn out that all these signatures will be sterile, then the percentage of defects will decrease,” CEC member Gennady Raikov gives hope to Mr. Kasyanov. The problem is that supporters of the ex-premier submitted only 2.63 million signature sheets to the Central Election Commission, thereby not providing themselves with a “strategic reserve” of 100 thousand autographs in case of marriage, as Andrei Bogdanov’s group did. At the moment, among Kasyanov’s signatures, only 2 million 1401 are considered valid. It only takes 1,402 more autographs for the QI experts to reject, and the check will be stopped as meaningless, and the candidate will be denied registration. After all, in order to be admitted to the ballot, the law requires that you have at least 2 million “good” signatures.

Nevertheless, CEC Secretary Nikolai Konkin said yesterday that Mikhail Kasyanov still “has a chance.” The fact is that one of the main complaints about Mr. Kasyanov’s signature lists is the incorrect execution of documents, in particular the lack of information about the collectors. Yesterday, supporters of the ex-prime minister provided the CEC with the necessary information, which makes his chances of registration a little less illusory. By the way, another 20 to 50 thousand Kasyanov’s autographs are now languishing in the Yoshkar-Ola city prosecutor’s office. All of them were confiscated from Rustam Abdullin, the head of Mr. Kasyanov’s election headquarters in the Republic of Mari El, whom law enforcement authorities suspected of falsifying signature sheets. It is possible that if they were authentic, these documents could significantly influence the outcome of the case, but they will no longer reach the CEC.

Without five minutes, the candidate Mr. Bogdanov explains the failure of his self-nominated competitor with poor preparation for collecting autographs: “They don’t prepare for elections at the last moment. Our party has been participating in elections since 1990, and we ate ten dogs with these signatures.” And Gennady Raikov complained that the leader of the VAT did not send a single representative to the inspection. “I was a deputy in three convocations of the State Duma, I collected signatures myself, but I have never seen anything like this!” - Mr. Raikov was indignant, describing the behavior of the End Socialist Party members as “negligence and neglect.” Such carelessness gave rise to rumors that Mr. Kasyanov simply changed his mind about running, fearing too low a result. However, since yesterday his associates have been present at the Central Election Commission. “Our representatives are in constant contact with members of the Central Election Commission, promptly resolving all issues,” assistant to the former prime minister Elena Dikun told a Vremya Novostey correspondent. “And the decision on registration will be political.”

Apparently, the decision is not easy for the Central Election Commission: yesterday’s meeting, at which Kasyanov’s topic was touched upon, was postponed at the last minute by an hour, and today the Central Election Commission will specially gather journalists to demonstrate to them the process of verifying signatures. Obviously, the head of the department, Vladimir Churov, is trying to use publicity to avert suspicions of political bias. The final consideration of the issue of registering Mr. Kasyanov was postponed to the last day permitted by law - January 27. However, taking into account all the facts presented, this intrigue can be considered exhausted.

After removing the “dissenter” from the race, ex-Prime Minister Andrei Bogdanov, whose party won the trust of only 0.13% of voters in the parliamentary elections, intends to position himself as a single candidate from the Democrats. However, most analysts are inclined to consider him an insurance figure that the authorities need in the extremely unlikely event that the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Gennady Zyuganov and the leader of the LDPR Vladimir Zhirinovsky decide to simultaneously withdraw their candidacies, thereby disrupting the elections.

Natalia ROZHKOVA