All news

Registration of candidates for September 8 elections almost finished

Various levels’ elections will be organized in the country’s 80 territories

Russia’s twelve of 16 regions have finished registration of candidates for the regional elections due September 8. While a year earlier the election campaign featured 28 parties, this year the number of parties is 54. However, the bigger number of parties is unlikely to affect governor elections, as most candidates failed to pass the municipal-level filter.

The party, which received most registration refusals, is Mikhail Prokhorov’s Civil Platform, the Kommersant writes. At the same time, small parties attract actively the communist and liberal electorate.

On September 8, various levels’ elections will be organized in the country’s 80 territories. Governors will be elected in ten regions, and in two of those - Ingushetia and Dagestan - the deputies will be electing the republics’ heads from the candidates nominated by the president. Russia’s 16 regions will elect deputies to local legislatures, and twelve regional centers will elect deputies to municipal legislatures.

Registration of candidates for heads of regions was over on August 2. Registration of candidates for different levels’ positions is completed by 80% and is due to be over by the weekend. The official statistics quotes 16,488 registered candidates (70% of nominated ones.)

Exactly 40 candidates are registered for governor elections. Most of them - 28 - represent the parliamentary parties. The parties, not represented at the parliament, managed to register only eleven candidates. Only one candidate - Moscow’s acting Mayor Sergei Sobyanin - is a self-nominated registered candidate.

The parliamentary parties have only one registered governor candidate - the one from LDPR, the Kommersant reports. The communists failed to pass a municipal filter in Chukotka, where the party has a regional branch. A Just Russia and United Russia in two regions have organized a coalition.

The Kommersant says the registration results allow the Kremlin to be sure the procedure of the municipal filter is working fine. “Everyone, who applied at least some efforts to collect signatures from municipal deputies, have not experienced any obstacles,” the newspaper quoted a source at the presidential administration as saying.

The most active non-parliamentary parties were Zelenye /Green/, who nominated 16 candidates in the regions, Patriots of Russia (15), Communists of Russia and CPSU /the Communist Party of the Soviet Union/ (14 each), Civil Platform, Civil Position and the Democratic Party of Russia (13 each). The statistics demonstrates that the many new communist and liberal brands will spread the traditional electorate of the Communist Party and, for example, that of Yabloko.

Regarding the refusals for governor elections, Civic Platform is the leader (will participate in ten regional and nine municipal elections - city legislatures and mayors). The Kommersant’s sources at United Russia explain the problems the Civic Platform has at the regional elections with the fact that the party’s leader Mikhail Prokhorov had not decided to participate in the Moscow mayoral election. “It was a mistake,” the source said, adding that decision had weakened the party.

LDPR’s results in the current election campaign are very impressive, the Nezavisimaya Gazeta wrote. The party’s candidates passed registration for all the eight governor vacancies. The party has offered its lists to 16 legislatures in Russia’s regions. Municipal administrations, regional heads, municipal authorities are the levels the liberal democrats are applying for. Of course, the newspaper continues, it would be very interesting to see their results on the voting day of September 8. However, already now the communists claim the situation comes from an actual union between LDPR and United Russia.

Another interesting trend is that new parties seem to be more interesting for themselves to compete for deputy mandates of various levels rather than for positions at executive authorities, the newspaper writes. For example, only 26 parties decided to participate in governor election campaigns, and 28 - will compete for positions of regional administrative heads. As for the rush for legislatures’ mandates, 47 parties are ready to compete. Municipal authorities of regional capital cities are of high interest, too - here candidates from 45 parties have been registered.