Russia on Friday disqualified the sole liberal challenger to Vladimir Putin in March 4 presidential elections, in a move slammed by his supporters as undermining the legitimacy of the polls. Russia’s central elections commission said it could not accept nearly a quarter of the registration signatures gathered by Grigory Yavlinsky because they were either photocopies of originals or fakes.
“I am sad to announce that we will not able to register Yavlinsky as a candidate,” election commission member Sergei Danilenko told a special hearing. Russia’s strict presidential election rules require all independent candidates whose parties fail to win seats in parliament to collect two million signatures to win registration. The restriction has been heavily criticised by the candidates as well as the growing protest movement against Putin, who will be standing for a third Kremlin term in the polls after his four year stint as prime minister.
PT:
You are merely copying what western presses (US/UK politicians) are campaigning. Please grow-up and do your own journalism. Points to note:
1. "bar" has a different connotation from "disqualify", which is exactly what happened here. Russia's election commission has published rules firmly in place for quite some time and they don't get changed in the middle of the game. In all experience their governing party face effective challenge from opposition – fact.
2. Danilenko is hardly a challenger to Putin. He or his party has virtually no impact on Russian political scene. If it does, it probably consolidates Putin's opposition vote — and that hardly goes in Putin's favor.
All in all, this is only crafting of words to make Putin look bad (his name is being mentioned in the context), although he does not have anything to do in this matter.
PT: As part of responsible journalism, use your own judgement before serving the west's interest without even realizing it…
Comments are closed.