The only candidate who advocated for peace with Ukraine will not be able to run in the presidential elections that will be held in Russia on March 15, 16 and 17. The veteran politician Borís Nadezhdin announced yesterday that the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) had refused to register him to stand in the elections and face the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, for whom re-election is more than certain. Before announcing the decision in a Telegram message, the Commission explained that it had found too many invalid signatures among the 105,000 that Nadejdin’s team submitted on January 31.
Every candidate who stands in the elections without a party behind him with representation in Parliament must collect a certain number of endorsements. Those who, like Nadejdin, have extra-parliamentary political training (Civic Initiative) had to present 100,000 valid endorsements. Of Nadejdin’s signatures of support, the Electoral Commission declared 9,147 invalid. This means more than 5% allowed to register the candidate.
After the data was made public, the politician proposed to the CEC to postpone the decision on his registration, but its president, Ella Pamfílova, explained that the body is obliged to continue and cannot adapt to the needs of a candidate. The official deadline for accepting or rejecting candidate registration is February 10.
The already rejected aspirant showed his disagreement with the decision on his Telegram channel. “I do not agree with the decision of the Electoral Commission (…). I will appeal to the Supreme Court of Russia”, he promised. “I have gathered more than 200,000 signatures across Russia. We did the collection in an open and honest way: the queues at our offices and collection points were seen all over the world”, he explained. “Taking part in the presidential elections of 2024 is the most important political decision of my life. I will not give up my intentions.”
The Commission also denied registration as a candidate to Sergei Malinkovich, a candidate for the Communist Party of Russia, a small formation that split from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in 2012. When he had verified 60,000 signatures, officials certified that there 8,979 invalid signatures, already exceeding the 5% allowed. Pamfilova said that the decision “was taken unanimously”.
So far, the Russian CEC has registered four presidential candidates for next month’s presidential election. Leonid Slutski, leader of the nationalist Liberal-Democratic Party; Nikolai Kharitonov, for the Communist Party, and Vladislav Davankov, from Gent Nova, did not have to present signatures of support because they are endorsed by their parties, with parliamentary representation.
The fourth is Vladimir Putin. The Russian president decided to run as an independent, without the support of his party, United Russia, and had to collect 300,000 signatures. He submitted them at the end of January and was registered.
The figure of Boris Nadezhdin, a 60-year-old political veteran little known in Russia, became a surprise in January, when thousands of Russians began lining up to support him, both inside the country as in some offices installed outside. The absence of a substantial opposition to Putin, since most of his representatives are in prison or in exile, allowed this attraction. Some important figures, such as the exiled ex-oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky or the team of the imprisoned Aleksei Navalni, showed their support.
But above all, his critical position towards the Kremlin’s policy in Ukraine has counted. As a candidate, he has promised the end of the war and the return of those mobilized. When talking about the “special military operation”, the official name given to the conflict, he said that it seems to him “a fatal mistake”. He also promised to release Russia’s political prisoners.
With liberal positions (at the beginning of the century he was a deputy for the defunct Union of Right-Wing Forces), today he is a councilor in Dolgoprudni, a city of 120,000 inhabitants 20 kilometers from Moscow.
Despite this position, some voices critical of the Kremlin have suggested that Nadezhdin, who has regularly appeared as a guest on television programs about the conflict, could not have come this far if the powers that be had not allowed him, which he has denied .
Indeed, another pacifist aspirant, journalist Yekaterina Duntsova, was disqualified by the CEC in December, citing flaws in the application and documents submitted to register as a candidate.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who a few weeks ago said Nadezhdin was not a serious rival for Putin, defended the Commission’s work on Thursday. He has done his job demanding respect for the rules, he assured. “We have heard from the CEC that there have been a large number of errors in the signatures and that it has invalidated a large number. In other words, this important criterion has not been met”, he said.
