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Of: TT
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Photo: Dmitri Lovetsky / AP / TT
Regional elections in Russia end on Sunday. Here is a voter in St. Petersburg in front of a pair of virus-protected election officials.
Russia’s regional and local elections will be a test of whether President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party retains its firm grip on power.
There are signs that the opposition forces may advance.
The elections, which span three days, are held in relief from the poisoning of top regime critic Alexei Navalny in Siberia on August 20.
Navalny was poisoned during a trip where he accuses several United Russia candidates of corruption and abuse of power on the set.
The opposition’s tactic is to urge voters to “vote smart”, not by boycotting the elections but by investing everything in the candidate who has the best chance of winning the United Russia candidate.
Growing knot
Putin’s ruling party dominates politics in the country’s eleven time zones. But the election coincides with widespread discontent after years of falling real wages and the government’s handling of the virus crisis.
– People are tired of being promised a bright future only if you vote for them (United Russia). Five years have passed and everything is exactly the same, says Andrei Fateev, 32, one of two Navalny candidates in the Siberian student town of Tomsk.
There are cracks in the wall that give hope to the opposition.
Persistent protests
In Novosibirsk, also a university town with many protest voters, United Russia faces strong opposition from both the Communist Party and the Navalny-led opposition, with Sergei Bojko as the main figure.
Boyko is the main character in Navalny’s film about Novosibirsk, which has millions of views online.
Another example is the city of Khabarovsk, in the Russian Far East. Residents have demonstrated for two months every Sunday to protest the arrest of their popular Governor Sergei Furgal. He defeated the United Russia candidate in 2018 and was later accused, on questionable grounds, of having ties to order assassinations.
Reported electoral fraud
Elections, which began on Friday and end on Sunday, are taking place in some parts of the country. They are expected to give an indication of how sustainable the opposition’s tactics are ahead of next year’s national elections for the State Duma.
In the regional elections, 18 governors will be elected. In addition, elections for local parliaments and municipalities are held in almost half of the country.
The first electoral results from the Far East show that the apparatus of power remains firm. The Kremlin-backed governors of Kamchatka and the Jewish Autonomous Region won landslide victories.
The Russian independent election observation group Golos has received a “series of reports” about election observers being denied access to documents and complaints, leading to fights in some places. There was also information that election officials exchanged ballots, according to Golos.
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