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Success for supporters of Kremlin critic Alexej Navalny in Siberia: Following the poisoning of the Russian opposition politician in the city of Tomsk, two Navalny employees triumphed in local elections there. In Novosibirsk, some 600 kilometers away, Nawalnys campaign companions also moved to the town hall.
The Kremlin’s opponent, Navalny, collapsed on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow on August 20. The plane had to make a stop in Omsk. Navalny was hospitalized there and airlifted to Berlin on August 22, where he has been treated ever since. Bundeswehr experts found traces of chemical weapons from the Novichok group on his body. Russia denies having anything to do with the assassination attempt.
According to preliminary information from the authorities, the Kremlin party, United Russia, lost the majority in the city parliament with its 37 seats in Tomsk. After counting all the votes, the party achieved 24.47 percent. That corresponded to 11 seats. Before that, she had 21 terms.
Navalny employees Xenia Fadejewa and Andrei Fateev will move to Tomsk City Hall. United Russia remains the strongest faction, but without a majority. The Communists received 17.55 percent of the vote. It was followed by the Pueblo Nuevo (Nowyje Ljudi) party, which was only admitted this year and obtained 15.06 percent from the start. The new political force, which is also committed to the self-employed and ecology, also achieved success in other cities. It is considered the Kremlin’s spoiler party, founded before the important elections to the State Duma in 2021 to channel the spirit of protest in the country beyond the independent and critical Kremlin opposition.
A wide spectrum of political views is now represented in Tomsk’s tiny parliament: in addition to ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s liberal democrats, representatives of the Just Russia party, the independent liberal opposition force Yabloko, and the Growth Party now have mandates.
Success also in Novosibirsk
Navalny’s team achieved a second success in Siberia in Novosibirsk: there Sergei Bojko won his constituency in the center of the 1.6 million metropolis. He ran against a communist who has held office for 24 years and is also the mayor’s right hand man.
Boyko had managed to unite a coalition of independent members of the opposition into a coalition. 31 of them ran for city council election, four won their constituencies. In a fifth part there are irregularities: there were 300 official student ballots said to have voted in advance, before the main day of the elections. Without these votes, the opposition candidate would win. Boyko’s team now wants to take legal action against the election commission’s decision.
Boyko’s coalition was against United Russia and the communists providing the mayor of Novosibirsk. The electoral campaign in the city was dirty, among other things the members of the opposition were vilified, threatened and attacked.
Both parties, United Russia and the Communists, lost seats in the city council, according to the independent website Tayga.Info. According to the German time in the morning, the composition is as follows:
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Only 23 politicians from United Russia are represented, compared to 33;
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eight communists entered, before there were 12;
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There are also four Zhirinovsky Liberal Democrats, nine politicians who describe themselves as officially independent, and one member of the Green Party and one of the Heimat.
There are a total of 50 mandates in the body.
Navalny promoted the “smart vote” strategy
Navalny and his team had campaigned for their “smart vote” strategy in dozens of regional elections Sunday before being poisoned. They called for any candidate to be chosen, but not the Kremlin Party. In Novosibirsk, the same applied to the Communists. The opposition aims to break United Russia’s monopoly of power. The plan worked in the case of Tomsk and Novosibirsk, according to preliminary results. Navalny was also successful in Moscow in municipal elections last year.
Independent election observers reported hundreds of irregularities during elections in dozens of regions on September 13. In particular, high results were reported for Kremlin Party representatives in the gubernatorial elections in all 18 regions.
Election observers from the independent organization Golos criticized the pre-vote on September 11 and 12 before the main election day. Voting days make it nearly impossible to observe the vote without loopholes, making forgeries and tampering easier. In the Jewish Autonomous Region in the Far East, according to the electoral commission, the highest voter turnout was reported in the first two days: almost 58 percent of voters are said to have voted early.
