Yekaterina Duntsova, the 40-year-old unbiased politician who declared her intention to run within the 2024 presidential election, talks to an AFP reporter in Moscow on December 20, 2023. The election can be held over a three-day interval from March 15 to 17. (Photograph by Vera Savina / AFP) (Photograph by VERA SAVINA/AFP by way of Getty Pictures)
Vera Savina | Afp | Getty Pictures
Former TV journalist Yekaterina Duntsova was disqualified on Saturday from operating in opposition to President Vladimir Putin in an election subsequent March due to alleged flaws in her software to register as a candidate.
Video from a gathering of the central electoral fee confirmed members voting unanimously to reject the candidacy of Duntsova, who had needed to run on a platform to finish the conflict in Ukraine and launch political prisoners.
Her disqualification was seized on by Putin’s critics as proof that nobody with real opposition views can be allowed to face in opposition to him within the first presidential election for the reason that begin of the 22-month conflict. They see it as a pretend course of with just one doable end result.
The Kremlin says Putin will win as a result of he enjoys real help throughout society, with opinion ballot rankings of round 80%.
The pinnacle of the electoral fee, Ella Pamfilova, supplied phrases of comfort 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 mentioned.
Screenshots posted by a telegram channel representing Duntsova confirmed paperwork that it mentioned the fee had highlighted as missing correct signatures.
Duntsova, 40, instructed reporters her staff had assembled the appliance in a rush and had bother discovering a lawyer to certify the bid, after dozens of others declined.
She mentioned she had approached veteran liberal politician Grigory Yavlinsky about the potential of submitting a brand new software to face as a consultant of his Yabloko occasion.
“I hope there will be some kind of reaction… We have similar values in principle,” Duntsova mentioned.
However Yavlinsky mentioned in an interview on a YouTube channel that Yabloko wouldn’t again her “because we don’t know her”.
Duntsova had offered papers to the electoral fee lower than 72 hours earlier in help of her bid. It was largely ignored by pro-Kremlin state media, which additionally didn’t report on her disqualification.
Belarus state of affairs
When Duntsova mentioned final month that she needed to face, commentators had variously described her as loopy, courageous, or a part of a Kremlin-scripted plan to create the looks of competitors.
“Any sane person taking this step would be afraid — but fear must not win,” she instructed Reuters in an interview in November.
Abbas Gallyamov, a former Kremlin speechwriter now labeled by the authorities as a “foreign agent,” mentioned Putin had not needed to danger the identical state of affairs as Alexander Lukashenko.
The Belarussian chief clung to energy in 2020 solely with the assistance of what the opposition and Western governments mentioned was large-scale poll rigging to allow him to assert 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 management of the levers of energy, supporters and opponents alike say he’ll cruise to a brand new six-year time period which, if he completes it, would make him Russia’s longest-serving ruler for the reason that 18th century — outlasting all Soviet rulers together with Josef Stalin.
His best-known opponent, Alexei Navalny, is serving jail sentences totaling greater than 30 years and his supporters say they don’t even know the place he’s after they have been instructed he had been moved from his earlier penal colony earlier this month. Legal professionals final had entry to him on Dec. 6.
Russia’s Communist Celebration, whose candidates have completed a distant second to Putin at each election since 2000, was assembly on Saturday to appoint Nikolai Kharitonov, a 75-year-old who stood beforehand in 2004 and received 14% of the vote to Putin’s 71%.
One other of the nominal opposition events in parliament, the A Simply Russia — For Fact occasion, mentioned on Saturday it will help Putin’s candidacy, state information company RIA reported.
