Translated material
An elaborate experiment
The Union of Right Forces and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation are ready to unite to cancel the results of the Duma elections
Yesterday, the Union of Right Forces party, following the communists, filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court of Russia to invalidate the results of the elections to the State Duma of the fifth convocation , held on December 2, 2007. The complaint was personally delivered to the court by SPS leader Nikita Belykh and party lawyer Vadim Prokhorov. The rightists wanted to file a complaint back in March, but then decided to wait for the communists and prepare a joint lawsuit. There were agreements on this score at the level of the party leadership, but in the end the Communist Party of the Russian Federation went to court first - on May 27.Nikita Belykh explained this with slightly different claims regarding the conduct of the elections. The communists in their statement of claim focused on the unequal position of the parties during the election campaign (for example, in terms of access to the media), as well as unfair vote counting. The communists accused the United Russia party of “misleading voters by providing deliberately false information about candidates,” as well as of using administrative resources and “counting votes.” SPS, which received just under 1%, complains of “unprecedented pressure” from the authorities during the election campaign, which distorted the election results.
“The party believes that as a result of intervention on the part of government bodies and officials (and primarily internal affairs bodies), who illegally used suppressive power functions and pressure from administrative resources under various pretexts, the real propaganda activities of the party were completely paralyzed, which led to the impossibility of conducting a full-fledged election campaign - in the absence of conditions ensuring the free expression of the will of voters,” says a statement released by the Union of Right Forces.
The right has calculated that during the election campaign, law enforcement agencies, under various pretexts, confiscated more than 40 million units of printed SPS propaganda materials - newspapers, leaflets, calendars. At the same time, the Union of Right Forces recalls that the seizure of more than 32 million copies of printed materials was subsequently declared illegal by the courts. Thus, according to party members, the lack of timely printed materials actually deprived the Union of Right Forces of the opportunity to conduct a full-fledged election campaign. Especially considering the lack of access to television, “monopolized by the authorities.” The right has not forgotten about its detained activists and the refusal to place propaganda videos on television. “Under the current conditions, it is impossible to identify the actual will of the voters,” the SPS statement of claim says.
Right-wing lawyer Vadim Prokhorov noted that the authorities did not interfere with the party in the process of filing a claim, although they were interested in this topic. “Various yellow, and not only yellow, sites immediately became active; representatives of the presidential administration began calling to clarify when we would file the claim. To be honest, we didn’t even expect such interest,” Mr. Prokhorov told reporters.
The SPS claim was accepted on all counts except one, which raised the issue of recognizing the inaction of the Central Election Commission of Russia as illegal.
Neither Vadim Prokhorov nor Nikita Belykh believe in the possibility of canceling the results of the Duma elections. But they hope that law enforcement officers who committed violations will be punished.
The rightists still intend to file a petition to merge their application with the claim of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the consideration of which is scheduled for June 10. “As far as we understand, the communists do not object to this, but I think the court will not agree to this, so as not to strengthen our positions,” says Vadim Prokhorov.