Oddities in State Duma Campaign

by Arkady Lyubarev

PhD in Law and Biology, expert in election law; Expert of Civil Initiatives Committee. Since 2013 - co-chairman of Movement 'Golos' Board

In a previous post, I referred to the fact that only 9 out of 60 non-privileged[1] parties yet had tried to run for Election to the State Duma. Of course, in a certain way these statistics characterizes the party system that emerged as a result of the 2012 Reform. However, the predominant posture of these nine parties is also rather strange.

Obviously, these parties have to hurry up. It is quite difficult to collect 200 thousand signatures, but, in my view, it is manageable. However, it takes quite a lot of time.

In accordance with the law and the election schedule, the deadline for submitting registration documents - 3 August. However, the deadline for non-privileged parties which have nominated candidates on federal party-list and candidates in single-member constituencies, actually becomes shorter.

Here I must confess that I have reiterated several times before that the Federal Law 'On Elections to the State Duma ...' implicates uncertainty in regard to the deadline that shall be respected by the non-privileged parties in order to register their party-list without prior signature-gathering. In fact, there is no uncertainty. The Part 3 of Article 47 clearly stipulates: 'At the time when a candidate, nominated in a single-member constituency by a party, which is subject to the Part 3 of Article 44 of this Federal Law, must submit registration documents to the district election commission, he/she is exempted from signature-gathering in support of his/her nomination if the federal party-list of the same political party has already submitted voters' signatures in support of the party'.

In other words, in order a candidate in single-member constituency nominated by non-privileged party could be exempted from signature-gathering, the party must submit the documents for registering its federal party-list not later than the 24 of July. Otherwise, the candidate will be required to collect 3% of voters' signatures and in most of cases it is about 15 thousand signatures. Thus it does not make sense for collecting more than 7 thousand signatures in support of the federal party-list in the same region – additional ones will not be taken into account.

The day to start signature-gathering was postponed by joint efforts of all parties. The President announced the polling day almost the very last day - 17 June, though under the law he could have done that already on 30 May. It is provisioned that CEC has 7 days to certify party-lists (in 2003, it had 3 days). Well, the parties themselves were not in a rush. In the first week since the campaign was launched among the non-privileged parties only 'Labour Union' (June 21), 'The People Against Corruption' (22 June) and the Native Party (24 June) held their congresses.

The further waddling goes as follows: on June 25 - 'WILL', on 26 June - The Party of Social Reforms and the party of The Parents of the Future, on June 28 - The Great Fatherland, on July 2 - the party 'Great works ...' and 'Alliance of the Green'.

But then, the process slowed down for some unknown reason. 'The Parents of the Future' party was the first to submit the documents to CEC (July 5), that is, 9 days after the nomination. However, it is well-known, that it was denied certification.

The next party was the 'Great Fatherland' (July 6), 8 days after the nomination. Thus the 'Labour Union' submitted the documents on July 8, 17 days after the nomination.

There is no information about document submission by the following parties: 'People Against Corruption', 'Native party', 'WILL', The Party for Social Reform and 'Great works ...'. Apparently, they have not yet submitted the documents, though the four of them already have nominated they candidates 12-15 days ago.

It might be true that CEC is the one to impede the process, as it is sluggish in receiving the documents and set some other priorities. It should be understood that there is no need to rush for privileged parties, whereas for the non-privileged parties every day matters. They need to hurry up and to urge CEC for giving way in respect to the privileged parties.

Thus none of the non-privileged parties are yet certified. Probably, the first party to be certified is the 'Great Fatherland' - most likely it will happen on July 13. The party will have only 22 days for collecting 200 thousand signatures (inevitably some time is spent for sending, verification, stitching and other procedures required for the registration). And if it prefers that its candidates in single-member constituencies would be exempted from signature-gathering - only 12 days! The other parties will have even less time.

The special attention shall be paid to the 'Alliance of the Green'. Pamfilova said that the party did not respect the provision requiring to notify CEC of the party congress, though the party claimed vice versa. We will wait for the resolution of this issue, but the situation seems to be rather strange. The party leader Alexander Zakondyrin already has stated that 'everything that happened was a well-planned campaign in order to prevent the 'Alliance of the Green' from running for election. Although it is unclear who perceives this party without any popular personalities as dangerous.

I would like to make a separate remark on the online campaign activitiees of these parties. The information on nomination of party-lists is posted on the websites of the 'Labour Union', Native Party, the party 'WILL', the Great Fatherland, 'The Alliance of the Green'. However, they do not disclose the candidates on their party-lists. The party 'People Against Corruption', 'Great works ...' and the party 'The Parents of the Future' did not post any information on their websites as if they did not stand for election. The Party for Social Reform has no website.

In general, yet it seems these parties imitate electoral race.

[1] A non-privileged party – a political party that is not exempted from voters‘ signature-gathering in support of the party as the pre-condition to stand for election.