Mayoral election result nullified as Putin’s man wins ‘rigged’ vote

ELECTION officials in Russia’s far east nullified results of a run-off mayoral election yesterday, following reports of mass rigging in favour of a candidate backed by President Vladimir Putin.

It is the first time an election has been invalidated since 2002.

The scandal in the Primorye region, a key district for the Kremlin, began on Sunday, when an opposition candidate accused local election authorities of stealing the vote at the last minute in favour of the ruling United Russia party.

Andrei Ishchenko, the candidate put forward by the Communist party, was winning when more than 98per cent of the votes were counted.

However, the results changed overnight, when the rest of the votes were counted, and Andrei Tarasenko, the United Russia candidate backed by the president, took the lead. Election monitors and Russian media reported multiple violations and irregularities at polling stations.

In one incident, a firefighting brigade suddenly appeared and evacuated an entire polling station without any signs of fire or smoke. In some cases, polling stations counted more votes than voters registered at them.

On Wednesday, Russia’s Central Election Commission recommended that election authorities in Primorye invalidate the vote.

“We’re talking about systematic, well-planned violations that led to the result we’re seeing,” Boris Ebzeyev, a commission member, told the Interfax news agency.

Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, supported the move, saying that “legitimacy, transparency, cleanness and fairness” of elections is much more important to Mr Putin than victory of a candidate he backs.

The new vote is scheduled to be held in three months’ time. It is still unclear whether both Mr Ishchenko and Mr Tarasenko are going to run again.

On Wednesday, Mr Tarasenko told reporters he would not run if there was a new vote, but then backtracked at a rally of his supporters.

Mr Ishchenko said he is planning to contest the decision to invalidate the election in court.

“If we have [one] election invalidated, then we should invalidate all elections that took place in the country over the past 26 years,” the candidate told the RBC news outlet.