Anti-war candidate barred from Russia’s
presidential election
Yekaterina Duntsova wanted to end the conflict in
Ukraine, but her candidacy was rejected over alleged flaws in her application
Reuters
Sat 23 Dec
2023 14.23 GMT
A former TV
journalist has been disqualified from running against Vladimir Putin in
Russia’s presidential election because of alleged flaws in her application to
register as a candidate.
Footage
from a meeting of the central electoral commission in Moscow showed members
voting unanimously to reject the candidacy of Yekaterina Duntsova, who had
wanted to run on a platform to end the war in Ukraine and release political
prisoners.
Her
disqualification was seized on by Putin’s critics as proof that no one with
genuine opposition views will be allowed to stand against him in March – the
first presidential election since the start of the 22-month conflict. They see
it as a fake process with only one possible outcome.
The Kremlin
has said Putin will win because he enjoys genuine support across society, with
opinion poll ratings of about 80%.
The head of
the electoral commission, Ella Pamfilova, offered words of consolation to
Duntsova after her rejection.
“You are a
young woman, you have everything ahead of you. Any minus can always be turned
into a plus. Any experience is still an experience,” Pamfilova said.
Screenshots
posted by a Telegram channel representing Duntsova showed documents that it
said the commission had highlighted as lacking proper signatures.
Duntsova,
40, told reporters her team had assembled the application in a hurry and had
trouble finding a lawyer to certify the bid, after dozens of others declined.
She said
she had approached the veteran liberal politician Grigory Yavlinsky about the
possibility of submitting a new application to stand as a representative of his
Yabloko party.
“I hope
there will be some kind of reaction … We have similar values in principle,”
Duntsova said.
But
Yavlinsky said in an interview on YouTube that Yabloko would not back her
“because we don’t know her”.
Duntsova
had presented papers to the electoral commission less than 72 hours earlier in
support of her bid. It was largely ignored by pro-Kremlin state media, which
also failed to report on her disqualification.
When
Duntsova said that she wanted to stand, commentators had variously described
her as crazy, brave or part of a Kremlin-scripted plan to create the appearance
of competition.
“Any sane
person taking this step would be afraid – but fear must not win,” she told
Reuters in an interview in November.
Abbas
Gallyamov, a former Kremlin speechwriter now labelled by the authorities as a
“foreign agent”, said Putin had not wanted to risk the same scenario as
Alexander Lukashenko.
The
Belarusian leader clung to power in 2020 only with the help of what the
opposition and western governments said was large-scale ballot rigging to claim
victory over opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.
“The
Tsikhanouskaya effect is absolutely possible, and in the Kremlin they
understand that,” Gallyamov wrote on Telegram.
With Putin
in full control of the levers of power, supporters and opponents alike say he
will cruise to a new six-year term which, if he completes it, would make him
Russia’s longest-serving ruler since the 18th century – outlasting all Soviet
rulers including Josef Stalin.
His
best-known opponent, Alexei Navalny, is serving prison sentences totalling more
than 30 years. Navalny’s supporters say they do not know where he is, after
they were told he had been moved from his penal colony this month. Lawyers last
had access to him on 6 December.
Russia’s
Communist party, whose candidates have finished a distant second to Putin at
every election since 2000, was meeting on Saturday to nominate Nikolai
Kharitonov, a 75-year-old who stood previously in 2004 and won 14% of the vote
to Putin’s 71%.
Another of
the nominal opposition parties in parliament, the A Just Russia - For Truth
party, said it would support Putin’s candidacy, state news agency RIA reported.
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