Kremlin in shock
> Russians reject hand-picked candidates for third week in a row
MOSCOW: The Kremlin has suffered a third weekend of election shocks, with its soldiers unexpectedly losing two gubernatorial races to scarcely credible “opposition” candidates.
In both Khabarovsk Krai, in the Russian Far East, and Vladimir Oblast, just east of Moscow, handpicked Kremlin candidates lost second-round run-offs to members of Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party – but despite its name, the party is a decidedly undemocratic, nationalistic party, reportedly linked to the mafia.
In Khabarovsk, the vote difference was a massive ratio of 3:1, with Sergei Furgal polling 67.57% against incumbent Vyacheslav Shport’s 27.97%.
In Vladimir Oblast, Vladimir Sipyagin beat loyalist Svetlana Orlova by a smaller margin – 57% to 37.46%.
The results followed a similar story last week when the gubernatorial election in Primorsky Krai in the Far East region was apparently won by Communist Party candidate Andrei Ishchenko.
But the victory was snatched at the last, probably by wide-scale election fraud.
Ishchenko, incensed, announced a hunger strike the following morning – only to call it off by tea-time following a call from his loyalist leader.
Moscow’s elections chief Ella Pamfilova eventually ruled that election invalid.
But she was ridiculed for her insistence that the complaints demonstrated fair and competitive elections.
Speaking with journalists on Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted the government has been taken aback by the nature of the voting.
With one exception in 2015, they are the first reverses for the ruling United Russia party since direct governor elections returned in 2012.
They come at a time that competitive, opposition politics have been eliminated from the country.
President Vladimir Putin’s only obvious challenger, Alexei Navalny, left prison on Monday following 30 days of detention, only to be arrested immediately after his release.
Those “opposition” parties allowed to compete in Russia’s election system usually play a specific role.
The deal is they offer candidates too outrageous or toxic to ordinary voters.
Most of the time that has worked. This year, however, something changed.
Against the backdrop of the government’s highly unpopular pension reform, voters have looked to give the ruling party a bloody nose wherever they can.
And they have voted in masses for the candidate who has the most chance of defeating the party candidate – even if that means voting for the Liberal Democrat Party or no-less reviled Communists. – The Independent