Translated material
No noise and soot
11 parties were allowed to participate in the State Duma elections
The ballot paper that Russians will receive in the parliamentary elections on December 2 will be unusually short . The Central Election Commission allowed only 11 parties to fight for popular recognition, having registered their lists of candidates for deputies. Three parties were denied the right to compete for parliamentary seats.Registration ended yesterday. To meet the deadline, members of the Central Election Commission selflessly spent the entire weekend in meetings. On Friday, the United Russia list was registered, thereby officially approving President Vladimir Putin as a candidate for deputy. True, CEC member Evgeniy Kolyushin expressed somewhat belated concern that a head of state so popular among the people was participating in the elections. “The Institute of the President is the most powerful body of government in Russia, and the law prohibits government bodies from participating in election campaigning,” Mr. Kolyushin reminded his colleagues. But the Chairman of the Central Election Commission, Vladimir Churov, tactfully left the topic, saying that the working group on information disputes deals with issues of campaigning, and the registration of the list does not depend on this.
On Saturday, the first expelled appeared - the Russian environmental party "Greens". After checking 70 thousand signatures out of 210 thousand collected by environmentalists in their support, experts considered 17.27% of autographs unreliable and invalid, while the permitted percentage of defects was no more than 5%. Deputy head of the party apparatus Alexander Belozerov did not agree with this: “Why were other parties’ signatures recognized as valid despite the same complaints, but not ours?” The offended "greens" are going to appeal the decision of the Central Election Commission in court - the law gives them ten days to do this.
The People's Union also intends to resort to court, from which 8.56% of its subscription lists were rejected. Party leader and State Duma Vice-Speaker Sergei Baburin complained to reporters that the TsIK workers did not give him an expert report indicating the reasons why the signatures were recognized as “impossible.” “They rejected it because the signature and date were supposedly not made by the same person,” Mr. Baburin was indignant, “but in graphology there are no methods that allow comparing numbers and autographs, and even in the absence of other samples handwriting!
The leader of the Peace and Unity Party, Sazhi Umalatova, was most indignant: she was found to have 5.16% of defective signatures, that is, only sixteen hundredths more than allowed. “This is an anecdote that will go down in history - one hundred signatures were not enough to register the party when 200 thousand were submitted!” - Mrs. Umalatova was indignant. Nevertheless, the Central Election Commission strictly observed the letter of the law, denying “Peace and Unity” access to the ballot. Thus, the ballot paper will have only 11 lines. Let us recall that in 2003, 23 parties and blocs sought recognition of the electorate in the Duma elections, in 1999 there were 29, and in 1995 - 44.
We can confidently predict that after the elections, several more outsider parties will find themselves thrown to the political margins due to a simple lack of funds. The law has raised the barrier, if not passed through, the party is obliged to pay for government broadcasting and newspaper space provided for campaigning. In 2003, parties that received less than 2% of the votes became debtors; in this case, you have to contrive to get at least 3%, which is not so easy in the current situation. In the future, defaulters will not receive free media arena in elections at all levels. In this political season, such punishment threatened the Party of the Revival of Russia of Gennady Seleznev, which ultimately refused to participate in the campaign altogether. Also, those who scored less than 4% will not return 60 million rubles. The electoral deposit is another hole in their meager budget. Finally, eight parties that won the favor of at least 3% of the electorate in the previous parliamentary elections have received financial support from the state all these years in proportion to the number of votes they received. For some, these receipts amounted to 80 to 100% of all income. Therefore, the cessation of state funding for small parties will be tantamount to their slow decline into political oblivion.
However, this is unlikely to upset anyone: according to analysts, the process of reducing the number of players on the Russian political scene was inevitable. “The legislation on parties and elections only spurred it on,” Boris Makarenko, deputy general director of the Center for Political Technologies, told Vremya Novostey. According to the expert, a situation cannot be considered healthy when, as in December 2003, almost half of the votes go to parties that do not enter parliament.
“The law was only used twice as a scalpel to destroy at least viable parties: these were the Republican Party of Vladimir Ryzhkov and the unborn Great Russia of Dmitry Rogozin,” says Mr. Makarenko. - In addition, it is important not how many parties are registered or included in the ballot, but how many actually participate in the competition for the distribution of deputy mandates. In the elections of 1995, 1999, 2003 there were about ten such parties. Now there are also seven or eight of them, although Putin’s decision to head the United Russia list has somewhat changed the balance of power. In any case, the actual reduction is smaller than it appears.”