Finish Line in Sight: Presidential Election in Russia Approaches Final Stages
Tonight, the Central Election Commission completed the acceptance of documents from self-nominees who intend to take part in the presidential elections.
A total of 46 notices were sent to the commission, but only 15 candidates were able to fulfill all the formalities in time. This included the incumbent head of state.
Self-nominees need to collect as many as 300 thousand signatures in their support. They also had less time to apply than party nominees.
Here's the report by Alexander Baletsky.
Closed exactly at midnight for self-nominated candidates, the Central Election Commission is carefully checking the information provided by them. It was the last day that saw the biggest number — five applicants, all of whom had an intention to run. Vasily Pugachev was among them, he wanted to apply at 22:22 sharp, but was a bit late.
- You came at 22:25.
- We arrived at 22:22, but had to wait for our colleagues.
There are 70 applicants, an unprecedented result for Russia. It's easy to submit documents, but it's hard to pass the multi-stage screening process after that.
Yevgeny Shevchenko, a member of the Central Election Commission: "Now the CEC has five days to process the documents submitted by the presidential contenders. It includes confirming the fact that all the documents are authentic."
Now the candidates have to collect signatures. Signatures in support of the incumbent — President Vladimir Putin, are already being collected all over Russia.
A volunteer: "People are mostly positive, of all ages, both the youth and the elderly".
Khabarovsk, Simferopol, Vladivostok, Yekaterinburg. Whole families leave signatures in support of Putin.
- It is important for me to be confident in my future. Thus, I choose the President I know. I know his policies.
- I know no other person who did anything better for Russia than Putin.
Some are without a passport, but the volunteers are adamant.
- Can I sign on someone else's behalf?
- No, you can't.
The threshold for self-nominees is 300,000 signatures. Those nominated by non-parliamentary parties have to collect 100,000 signatures. Grigory Yavlinsky from Yabloko, Boris Titov from the Party of Growth, Ksenia Sobchak from the Civil Initiative are among them.
The nominees of the parties represented in the Duma don't have to collect any signatures at all. There are two such candidates — Pavel Grudinin, the head of ZAO Lenin's State Farm, formally nonpartisan, but nominated by the Communist Party, and the LDPR leader—Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
The latter is the first and so far the only officially registered presidential candidate. All the rest are only candidates to become candidates. But they are supposed to reach the finish line of the presidential race as soon as their documents are verified.
Ella Pamfilova, Central Election Commission chairman: "Both for party nominees and self-nominees, the race will end on January 31 at 6 pm, when the collected signatures and the necessary documents have been checked so that they can be officially registered as presidential candidates."
By February 10, the CEC should approve the final list of eligible candidates. They will campaign and debate until March 16th. Election day is on March 18th.
Alexander Baletsky, Konstantin Rodin, Andrey Grigoryev for Vesti.