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Moscow City Council In Focus As Russians Vote In Regional Elections

By Current Time September 08, 2019

MOSCOW -- Russians voted in local and regional elections that have turned into a serious test for the Kremlin, with the popularity of President Vladimir Putin and the ruling party on the wane.

In the Russian capital, liberal activists and political experts were closely watching the vote for the City Duma, or city council, following a summer of protests sparked by Moscow election officials' decision to bar some independent candidates from running.

Putin, asked by a journalist after voting whether he would have liked to have seen more diversity among candidates, dismissed the idea that more is better.

"In some countries there are 30, 50, or 100 [candidates]," he said after voting. "The quality of their work does not change from this. It's not quantity but quality that is important.

But Lyubov Sobol, a former City Duma candidate who was detained just days ahead of the vote for her role in recent opposition demonstrations, said the Moscow vote was "the funeral of even the illusion of a democratic election."

"We have the right to submit our political representatives for city council and municipal assembly elections, but we're banned from doing it," Sobol said outside a Moscow polling station.

Aside from the capital, elections were being held at some level in all 83 regions and cities of Russia. A vote was also held in Crimea, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.

But in July, election officials barred many of them on the grounds that some of the signatures they had submitted individually to get on the ballot were invalid.

The rejected potential candidates, many allied with anti-corruption crusader and Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny, accused local officials of using any means to keep them off the ballot, including harassment.

'Smart Voting'

Given the obstacles, Navalny ahead of the vote called on supporters to engage in "smart voting" -- essentially a call to back any candidate who has the best chance of beating a United Russia candidate.

The tactic has drawn some criticism from Navalny's liberal allies, and it wasn't immediately clear how it would play out in the vote for the City Duma.

"We will consider it a success if the number of United Russia [seats in Moscow] is somehow reduced," Navalny said after casting his vote. "Last time United Russia got 40 mandates out of 45. If they receive even one less than this it will be good, but we hope that we can put more significant pressure on them."

Officially, no United Russia candidates were on the ballot, including 10 incumbents seeking reelection to the City Duma. But many nominally ran as independents, and more than 30 were shown to have received financial backing from organizations with ties to the ruling party.

"I think it's important to vote for any candidate that's not from United Russia," said Oleg Ivanov, a Muscovite who said he was employed in security and received public contracts and who said he found out about the campaign through Navalny's Twitter feed. "We need to break their monopoly."

Ivanov didn't, however, consider voting for the Communist Party candidate whom Navalny has backed as part of the smart voting effort.

Another voter, Daria Ivashenkova, a 23-year-old university student, said she opposed the current government in Moscow, though she hadn't participated in any of the protests that roiled the city this summer.

"It's important to either boycott the election or spoil the ballot," she said -- meaning the common practice for voters opposed to listed candidates to write in another name or otherwise render a ballot invalid.

She said she went online and found the candidate Navalny had recommended under the smart voting effort.

By midday, there were no indications of major disruptions, though there were scattered reports of election-related problems in some places. In Tuva, a small region in southern Siberia, a bus carrying journalists and observers of the region's legislative election was shot at, reportedly by masked men riding horses. No injuries were reported.

In the country's second-largest city, St. Petersburg, there were reports that independent election monitors had been harassed. One affiliated with anti-corruption crusader Aleksei Navalny said she had had a green liquid splashed on her after being accosted by men outside her home who warned her not to interfere with the vote count.

The city's acting governor, Aleksandr Beglov, is seeking to win his first full term in office, after being appointed to his post last year by President Putin. But Beglov's tenure so far has been plagued by gaffes and questions of competence in running the liberal-minded city.

On the eve of the vote, Moscow police detained Vladimir Yegorov, an activist with the election-monitoring organization Golos. Yegorov was detained and charged with hooliganism, according to a September 8 Facebook post by Grigory Melkonyants, one of the organization's founders.

OVD-Info, a group that monitors protests and arrests in Russia, also said that Yegorov had been detained.

One of Russia's most prominent election monitoring organizations, Golos has been repeatedly pressured by authorities in the past. In 2013, it was labeled a "foreign agent" under a law aimed at restricting nongovernmental organizations ability to receive foreign funding.

Putin's Low Ratings

Ahead of the vote, Putin replaced several regional governors in a bid to avoid a repeat of last year's gubernatorial elections, when several Kremlin-backed candidates lost.

In Moscow, many members of the ruling United Russia party opted to run as independents in an apparent bid to mask their affiliation with the ruling party.

Much of the public has turned against United Russia after it passed a law raising retirement ages and raised the VAT rate. The party, which dominates parliament, also backed a program to tax long-distance trucking, and cracked down on local protests in many cities against numerous controversial proposals for coping with municipal household waste.

Another sign of United Russia's troubles: none of the officially registered candidates for the Moscow City Duma were running under United Russia's banner, reportedly the first time that had happened in the Russian capital.

Things aren't much better for Putin himself. Public trust in the Russian leader in May fell to its lowest level in 13 years, according to a Russian state pollster.

The decision to bar many liberals from running sparked a wave of protests in the Russian capital, with some 50,000 turning out at the August 10 opposition event.

That was among the largest demonstrations in Moscow since the massive 2011-12 protests against Putin's return to the Kremlin for a third term as president.

During the July 27 demonstration, some 1,300 people were arrested, prompting the United States, European Union, and human rights groups to denounce what they called the "disproportionate" and "indiscriminate" use of force against the demonstrators.

Putin largely ignored the protests, but on August 21 called them part of "pre-election tensions."

"Russia respects human rights and the rights of its citizens," Putin told reporters, adding that civilians and police who break the law "will be held accountable."

For his part, Navalny in July called on people to join one of the unsanctioned rallies, earning him a 30-day jail sentence.

On September 5, security forces stormed the offices of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, his live television studio, and his Moscow political headquarters. Three people were reportedly taken to a police station and later released without giving statements.

With Russian authorities conducting voting in Crimea, Ukraine's Foreign Ministry condemned the effort.

"The outcome of this illegal voting is null and void. It won't have any legal aftermath and won't be recognized by Ukraine and the international community," the ministry said in a statement.

Two days before the vote, the chief of Central Election Commission was assaulted when an intruder broke into her Moscow home early on September 6. Ella Pamfilova said she was unhurt in the attack involving a taser.

The vote in Moscow featured the debut of electronic voting in Russia, with three polling stations in one district taking part in a test run of the system.

With reporting by RFE/RL correspondent Matthew Luxmoore in Moscow and the Siberian Desk of RFE/RL's Russian Service

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-moscow-vote- protest-elections/30151991.html

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Moscow City Council In Focus As Russians Vote In Regional Elections