Translated material
March, "dissenter"!
The Central Election Commission has cut off the path to registering Mikhail Kasyanov as a presidential candidate
Almost the only intrigue of the current presidential elections associated with the registration as a presidential candidate of ex-Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov , the leader of the Russian People's Democratic Union (VDU), can be considered exhausted. Yesterday, Secretary of the Central Election Commission Nikolai Konkin announced that the verification of the second batch of signature sheets submitted by Mr. Kasyanov's associates in his support had been completed. Thus, to date, the CEC has verified 600 thousand signatures of this candidate - almost a third of their total number. Among them, vigilant experts managed to identify 13.38% of unreliable and invalid autographs, while by law this number cannot exceed 5%. After verification, the remaining 1 million 983 thousand signatures are considered valid, which in any case are not enough for candidate registration. There must be at least 2 million.Thus, only the most inveterate optimists can still hope that Mr. Kasyanov will be allowed onto the ballot. However, the head of the VAT himself is one of these optimists: he still hopes to take part in the presidential elections. Mr. Kasyanov stated this yesterday in Brussels during a conference dedicated to the problems of democracy in Russia. “We insist that all allegations of forgery of signatures are pure propaganda,” the former prime minister emphasized. “This is not a reason not to register me, and I expect that a decision will be made to register.”
“We believe that the Central Election Commission has actually confirmed that 2 million Russian citizens have signed up to support Mikhail Kasyanov,” this is how Elena Dikun, an assistant to the ex-prime minister, commented on what was happening to a correspondent of the Vremya Novostey newspaper. -- Among the verified signatures, only 213 were executed by one person for another, all the rest were rejected for reasons related to registration, and our representatives have already submitted their objections to the CEC. We expect that our candidate will be registered.”
Nikolai Konkin confirmed that the self-nominated’s associates sent their objections to the Central Election Commission regarding the results of checking the signature sheets. Now the working group is “studying and evaluating” the arguments of the Kasyanovites. Mr. Konkin also does not rule out that some of the signatures rejected by the TsIK experts may be recognized as valid and “returned” to the candidate’s collection. However, the percentage of dropped autographs is so high that only a miracle can reduce it to an acceptable level.
The upcoming withdrawal from the elections of Mikhail Kasyanov, in whose favor former SPS leader Boris Nemtsov left the race in December, is regarded by many experts as a political decision of the Kremlin, which does not want to see the name of a “dissenter” with the federal the power of a politician.
Observers are also led to think about the political decision made regarding Mr. Kasyanov by the close attention of law enforcement agencies to the entire process of collecting signatures by this candidate. In Mari El and in the Yaroslavl region, criminal cases have already been initiated on the basis of falsification of signature sheets. As official representative of the Prosecutor General's Office Tatyana Chernysheva reported, we are talking about 15.5 thousand autographs. Part 2 of Article 142 provides for punishment for such a crime in the form of large fines or imprisonment for up to three years. In this regard, it is not surprising that in the Kursk region 11 collectors considered it best to disavow politics in advance and sent statements to the election commission of the federal subject that they did not actually collect signatures. In other regions, collectors make such statements after talking with police officers investigating a case of autograph forgery. In this regard, the head of the Central Election Commission, Vladimir Churov, stated that his department did not initiate any checks of this kind, and the guardians of the law were simply collecting information during investigative activities. However, the Prosecutor General's Office began promoting "mass falsification" of signatures in support of Mikhail Kasyanov even before the first data from the verification of "autographs" from the Central Election Commission appeared.
The formal end to the series on the registration of Mikhail Kasyanov will be reached at a meeting of the Central Election Commission on January 27.