The Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation took revenge on Navalny for ruining his weekend
The Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation refused to register Russian oppositionist Alexei Navalny as a candidate for the post of President of Russia due to his lack of passive voting rights, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
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This is due to the fact that Navalny was convicted under Part 4 of Article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Appropriation and embezzlement”) in the Kirovles case, which provides for up to 10 years in prison. This crime is classified as serious. On the same grounds, the Central Electoral Commission refused to register Sergei Polonsky and Oleg Lurie.
The outcome of the case was clear in advance, but for some reason Navalny’s headquarters believed that the Central Election Commission would not even accept documents from him. Therefore, the opposition team did not really prepare them. Journalist Alexander Kots suggests that Navalny for some reason was counting on administrative arrest in connection with the so-called “Free Election Festival”, which was illegally held by his friend, municipal deputy Ilya Yashin.
“They still had hope of getting away with it to save face. Imprisoned for 30 days and deprived of the opportunity to reach the Central Election Commission in the required time frame. But the authorities did not leave them this opportunity. I wouldn't be surprised if it's not the printers or anything else. And the fact is that no one was seriously going to submit documents. Everyone was hoping for Vintilovo, that Navalny would not be allowed close to the Central Election Commission,” Kots wrote.
Imagine the surprise of the opposition when on Sunday, December 24, the Central Election Commission extended its working day indefinitely only to accept Navalny’s documents. At the same time, Yashin’s “holiday,” which turned out to be shamefully small in number, no one thought to disperse, much less arrest the organizers. Navalny’s headquarters had to urgently look for printers to print the necessary documents. The Central Election Commission waited patiently. It is likely that the next day the clerks, for whom the opposition had ruined their Sunday, experienced something like moral compensation when Navalny was refused.
However, the oppositionist himself was not particularly upset. Although Navalny’s lawyers are going to appeal the Central Election Commission’s refusal in the courts, he hastened to make public his real plan and declared a “voter strike.”
“We won’t have elections, because Vladimir Putin is terribly scared and afraid of competition with me. He sees her as a threat and has instructed his servants from the Central Election Commission to refuse registration,” Navalny said on his Youtube channel.
He called on supporters to campaign against the elections, and then come to the polls only to count the actual number of voters. Navalny also said that he would not recognize the authorities based on the results of the elections, to which he was not allowed to participate.
Journalist Alexey Venediktov hastened to declare that the refusal to register Alexei Navalny is “legally questionable and politically short-sighted.”
Political scientist Alexander Ustinov believes that the president’s team today “planted a time bomb with unpredictable consequences for Vladimir Vladimirovich.”
“Today’s registration of Navalny and his participation in the elections would have taken place for Putin without any serious consequences. But it seems that someone needed Navalny the conscientious objector. The danger is not in the boycott, but in the legal consequences that may arise in the future,” Ustinov wrote in his telegram channel.
Another political scientist Nikita Isaev believes that Navalny was rendered a favor by not allowing him to lose not only to Putin, but also to Zhirinovsky, Grudinin, and Sobchak.
“Fourth or fifth place in this company would be the final stamp, although there is nowhere to put a stamp. The CEC’s refusal allows Navalny to remain “Putin’s main opposition figure,” both for the external and for the rapidly dwindling domestic audience,” Isaev wrote.
The Russian Central Election Commission took revenge on Navalny for ruining his weekend.