Russian Opposition Member Boris Nadezhdin May Be Excluded from Presidential Elections

Feb 5, 2024 at 12:46 Update: 9 minutes ago

Russian opposition member Boris Nadezhdin may not be allowed to participate in the presidential elections. Nadezhdin wants to face current President Vladimir Putin on March 17, but is said to have falsified statements of support. The Russian electoral commission will decide on Wednesday whether he can still participate.

Candidates for the elections must submit 100,000 signatures. Nadezhdin did that last Wednesday. Two days later, the electoral commission said that there were “irregularities” because it contained names of deceased people.

Nadezhdin subsequently reported that 15 percent of his submitted signatures were invalid. That percentage is three times higher than the permitted margin of error when submitting statements of support.

A final decision must be made on Wednesday whether the only opposition candidate will be excluded. Nadezhdin says he will go to the Russian Supreme Court if he is not allowed to participate in the elections.

Sixty-year-old Nadezhdin has no chance of actually winning the elections, but through his participation Russians do have the opportunity to make their voices heard against the war in Ukraine. Nadezhdin has rarely spoken critically about this and wants to stop the “special military operation”, as Putin calls the war.

In Russia, the electoral commission more often excludes people who are critical of the regime. The other candidates who want to compete against Putin are all pro-Kremlin.

Elections are ‘show to the outside world’

The elections are Russia’s way of showing the outside world that a large part of the population does support the regime, university lecturer Nicolaas Kraft van Emmel previously told NU.nl. “But Russia is not a democracy, whatever standard you put next to it.”

It is not so much about the results, but about the election process. The regime benefits from a high turnout, according to Kraft van Emmel, “because the result must be credible.”

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2024-02-05 11:46:54
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