MOSCOW, December 20 (Itar-Tass) —— Russia’s Central Elections Commission registered on Tuesday Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as candidate for presidency.
Putin was the first to enter the presidential campaign. United Russia party nominated him on November 27 at the party’s congress. Putin is the leader of the party.
Russia’s presidential election is due on March 4, 2012.
On December 7, Putin presented necessary documents to the CEC, including a confirmation that he agrees to run for presidency. On December 11, the CEC registered United Russia’s authorised representatives, an authorised representative on financial matters and issued a permission to open a special bank account to form up an election fund. Necessary documents to pass the procedure were filed at the CEC on December 14.
In compliance with the current legislation, the CEC has ten days to consider an application. As a rule, candidates nominated by parties which are represented at the State Duma, receive decisions quicker. The reason is that the law does not oblige nominees of parliamentary parties from collection of two million signatures in their support. Thus the election commission does not have to conduct the long process of presented documents. It is only reasonable to suppose that leaders of CPRF /Communist Part of the Russian Federation/, Just Russia and LDPR /Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia/, who have big experience in presidential election campaigns, will pass the registration before the year ends, or during first days of January the latest.
For Putin, who was the country leader from May of 2000 through to May of 2008, this will be the third presidential election campaign. He was a leading contestant who won twice during the first round. In March of 2000, Putin scored 52.94 percent of the vote, and in March 2004 – 71.31 percent. It is noteworthy that at the presidential election of 2000, one of Putin’s rivals was Stanislav Govorukhin, who now heads Putin’s election headquarters.
As of today, ten candidates are ready to run for presidency in 2012. Besides Vladimir Putin, they are Sergei Mironov, nominated by the Just Russia congress on December 10, who filed his documents to the CEC on Monday. Leaders of LDPR Vladimir Zhirinovsky, of CPRF Gennady Zuganov and leader of Yabloko Grigory Yavlinsky are at different stages of formalities. Besides, five self-nominees passed a preliminary stage on December 18; they include businessman Mikhail Prokhorov, Governor of the Irkutsk Region Dmitry Mezentsev and others. Now they face an effort-consuming and rather expensive work to collect two million signatures each. It is important, that they are allowed to collect not more than 50,000 signatures per one federal district. These requirements are applicable to Grigory Yavlinsky, too.
The candidates are to present lists with signatures before 18:00 Moscow time on January 18, 2012, when the registration stage is over. By late January the nation will learn what names will be listed in the election ballots.