13 candidates were removed from the party list

The number of applicants for seats in the Tatarstan State Council has once again decreased. A week before the elections, 13 of the 33 candidates on the LDPR party list left the race. The party says that they were not ready for the fight. However, opponents of the LDPR do not exclude the possibility that these were “random people.” Experts and observers have different assessments of the chances of Vladimir Zhirinovsky's supporters to overcome the percentage barrier. However, they agree that the LDPR can get single-mandate members into the State Council.

Experts doubt that the LDPR will be able to overcome the barrier in the elections in Tatarstan
Photo: Oleg Kharseev, Kommersant

Yesterday, the Central Election Commission of Tatarstan excluded 13 candidates from the LDPR party list. Thus, only 20 representatives of the party will take part in the elections to the State Council of the Republic. As CEC Secretary Nadezhda Borisova reported, the candidates were removed from the elections by decision of the conference of the Tatarstan branch of the LDPR. According to information on the CEC website, among the withdrawn candidates, almost half are unemployed or housewives, some work together in the same organization (for example, two janitors from Aktobe Housing and Communal Service LLC in the Aznakaevsky district).

Let us remind you that elections to the State Council will take place on September 14. 100 deputies will be elected: 50 from single-mandate constituencies, 50 from party lists that will receive at least 5%. In total, seven political parties are participating: four from the Duma, as well as Rodina, the Motherland Party and the Communists of Russia. Previously, only United Russia and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation managed to get their representatives into the State Council of Tatarstan. The LDPR gained only 3.08% in the 2009 regional elections. In the 2011 State Duma elections, its result in the republic was slightly higher - 3.48%. In these elections, the LDPR list in Tatarstan (as in many other regions) was headed by party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

Deputy coordinator of the LDPR in Tatarstan Sergei Gushchin explained to Kommersant that the party’s candidates left the election race at their own request. According to him, they experienced a “psychological impact within themselves” and were not ready to “continue the fight further.” Noting that the majority of withdrawn candidates are women (11 out of 13 people), Mr. Gushchin pointed out that it is difficult for the “guardian of the hearth” to communicate with voters and compete with other parties: “They can throw mud at me. How will they react within the family? How do neighbors start looking at you? This factor played a role here, but not in our favor.”

A Kommersant source in the party stated that the removed candidates “have virtually no relation” to the LDPR: allegedly they “were added for quantity,” but “they looked at it in Moscow” and advised to exclude them. This information was denied to Kommersant by State Duma deputy Roman Khudyakov, who oversees Tatarstan from the LDPR faction (No. 2 on the election list): “Do you know that in Russia there are many janitors with higher education? Our party gave them the opportunity to prove themselves. It’s just that someone didn’t pass the diploma, someone didn’t deliver the paper.” Mr. Khudyakov insisted that all the withdrawn candidates were party members, since otherwise, according to the party rules, they would not have been nominated as candidates. The remaining 20 candidates on the list, he emphasized, “are enough to allow us to work (in the State Council—Kommersant) for the benefit of Tatarstan and the Tatar people.”

LDPR competitors question the self-confidence of party members. “They have zero chances,” says the head of the electoral headquarters of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in Tatarstan, Artem Prokofiev, who believes that the LDPR “does not work and appears only during the election campaign.” The communist believes that the withdrawn candidates could refuse to participate in the elections because of a recent interview with the first president of the republic, Mintimer Shaimiev, published in the party newspaper United Russia (Mr. Shaimiev said that he “has no idea” why Tatarstan residents should vote for the LDPR, since Vladimir Zhirinovsky “once said that all Tatars should be sent back to Mongolia”). Artem Prokofiev also drew attention to the fact that if four more candidates leave the list, the party will not participate in the elections at all (by law, the list is removed if more than half of the candidates leave it).

Ruslan Zinatullin from Yabloko (only single-mandate candidates participate from the party) says that “most likely, random people got on the LDPR list.” According to him, it is not only the LDPR that is “sinful” of this. In A Just Russia, Yabloko points out, there are many relatives of the chairman of the regional branch, Rushaniya Bilgildeeva, as well as employees of her company and business partners. Ruslan Zinatullin admits that the LDPR “has a certain electorate” in Tatarstan, but believes that the presidential office “does not want to see” the party in the State Council.

Kazan Federal University political scientist Andrei Bolshakov says that the LDPR is “on the verge of entering” the State Council: according to the latest opinion polls, 4.6% of those who have made their choice are ready to vote for it (see context). However, experts and observers believe that at least one single-mandate candidate may run from the party, in particular, Kazan City Duma deputy and former head of the regional branch of the LDPR Ruslan Yusupov, who ran in the Shalyapinsky district, where there is no United Russia candidate. “This is the only LDPR candidate who is running a strong campaign,” says Mr. Prokofiev.

Kirill Antonov

The LDPR could not resist psychologically