From Kirill Poludon at Kasparov.ru:

Russian voters are not interested in electoral fraud or campaign violations since they have no way of contesting election results. The efforts of one civil group that spent a year collecting signatures for a petition to have the 2011 State Duma election results declared illegitimate has thus been thwarted. Systemic oppositionists have not been any help, either: members of Yabloko, A Just Russia, and the Communist Party have refused to contest the election results and ignored the 13 thousand signatures collected by the group.

On December 14, the Russian Supreme Court threw out a request by five voters to disband the Central Electoral Commission, which confirms Duma election results. In addition to the signatures, the group of activists submitted 60 pages of evidence that the 2011 elections had been fraudulent. Federal Judge Nikolai Tolcheyev, however, was unconvinced, and rejected the request on the basis that the applicants “are contesting acts that do not affect [their own] rights, freedoms, or legal interests.” The activists disagreed.

The group decided to start the petition almost immediately after the controversial elections. “I was outraged,” said journalist Aleksei Torgashev. “But I didn’t want to just go to a rally and yell ‘Putin, go!’ Something concrete needed to be done.”

Leading activist Mikhail Shneyder of the Solidarity opposition movement introduced the idea to send a petition to the Supreme Court during a December 13, 2011, meeting with members of the first mass rally on Bolotnaya Square.

“We collected signatures by hand during rallies and marches. There was a huge torrent of pages of signatures for new elections after a blank form was published in Novaya Gazeta,” Shneyder told Kasparov.ru.

In six months, the group has managed to collect 13,117 in-person signatures. Several hundred were rejected for having insufficient information. The group chose a paper petition instead of an online one to have the added emphasis of the sheer weight of the paper, as well as to prevent critics from complaining about automated electronic signatures.

The activists planned to submit the petition in conjunction with opposition politicians, but members of Yabloko and A Just Russia almost immediately declined to contest the election results.

“We tried to cooperate with the Communist Party. They told us that the suit was being prepared; they constantly dragged it out. But a few days before the one-year limit to contest election results was up, the Communists refused to submit the complaint, even though we know it was ready. And the Communist Party didn’t even accept the election results,” Shneyder said.

“It turns out that it’s not very hard for the Kremlin to make agreements with our oppositionists. The decision to not submit the application to contest the election results was a political one,” claimed activist Grigory Sheyanov.

To prevent the total loss of a year’s worth of work and to deal “humanely” with those who signed the petition, the group decided to turn in a petition with only their names. It was rejected.

“We didn’t expect a different outcome. Yes, there is a legal stipulation that election results can only be contested by candidates. But that’s absurd. We’ll get a definitive decision from the Supreme Court and go to the Constitutional Court so that we can dispute the constitutionality of this position. Nobody before us has done this,” Sheyanov noted.

The activists who have come together over this case are unsure if their group will stay united after the final court appeals are over. In this sense, they are an analogy for the crisis within the entire protest movement.

“At the end of 2011 we found one vector – to protest unjust elections,” explained Aleksandr Rzhavsky of the Russian Academy of Sciences. “Since then, different events superseded this, and the movement fell apart since there’s nothing to unite around. Even the question of political prisoners clashes with other issues.”

Although they largely expect a disappointing court outcome, the activists do not believe they have spent their time in vain. “We brought attention to the lack of legal defense for voters, we showed just how ‘oppositionist’ certain parties are, and we brought the case through to the end.” And they are convinced that, regardless of what provokes the next wave of protests, the horizontal connections and experience with the petition will add “critical mass” to future projects.

Liliya Shibanova, head of the Golos Association, said on Monday that government authorities have toughened regulations on filming, which was particularly instrumental in revealing fraud in elections last December, and that members of the Central Electoral Commission have ramped up pressure on observers and active voters. Golos is the only independent electoral watchdog in Russia.

“We still haven’t moved on from that critical point where there’s a total lack of competition in the elections,” Shibanova said. “The technologies to falsify results remain in place as before, and the government has preserved the most important regions for itself, allowing opposition victories only on the municipal level.”

The Golos head noted that the only victories given to oppositionists were for members of the Yabloko party and independent candidates on the local level. Gubernatorial elections in Bryansk, Ryazan, Priamurye, Nizhny Novgorod, and Belgorod, however, all went to United Russia.

Aleksandr Kynev, an analyst from the Foundation for Information Policy Development, told Gazeta.ru that a preponderance of “spoiler parties” were also a problem for parties such as A Just Russia, the LDPR, and the Communist Party.

Such spoiler parties, which confuse voters and ultimately siphoning votes away from other parties, became possible after electoral reforms earlier this year lowered the threshold of members needed to form a party to 500. “In order for you not to get lost, you need to have a known, unique face. This can only be in the form of clear political positions, clear political steps, and bright leaders,” Kynev said.

The statement is reproduced below in full:

The European Parliament has condemned shortcomings and irregularities in the preparation and conduct of Russia’s 4 March presidential elections. In a resolution passed on Thursday, it called on Vladimir Putin to tone down his rhetoric against the protestors and begin a “sincere dialogue” with them.

MEPs point to the continuing concern “about developments in Russia with regard to human rights and commonly agreed democratic principles, electoral rules and procedures”.

Irregularities in the electoral process

Parliament regrets that the choice of voters was limited in the recent elections and demands comprehensive analyses of “all irregularities with a view to strengthening democratic rules for future elections”.

It points out that international election observers from the OSCE/Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, found that the presidential elections were “deeply skewed in favour of one candidate through shortcomings in the registration process, unequal media coverage and the use of State resources in favour of one candidate”.

Call for reform

MEPs ask President Medvedev to turn words into deeds and guarantee that the necessary reforms to the political system are made. They also “expect that the new Russian President Vladimir Putin will be ready to take them forward, including the much needed simplification of rules governing the registration of political parties”.

The resolution urges all sides to take the opportunity, before the new president is inaugurated, to decide on a comprehensive reform package. It expects president-elect Putin as well as political parties represented in the State Duma to start a dialogue with the protestors and opposition on the country’s future.

Finally, Parliament encourages Russian democratic opposition groups to unite more closely around political reforms, thus affording Russian citizens a credible alternative.

An original resolution issued by the European Parliament in response to Russia’s March 4 presidential election was labeled as “too soft” by United Civil Front leader Garry Kasparov and opposition politician Mikhail Kasyanov, as well as several MEPs from the European People’s Party and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe. The original made note of electoral violations but did not support any sort of sanctions against Moscow. With Thursday’s statement, an eventual amended version of the resolution is expected to be harsher.

Everyone to the referendum!

The inevitability of Putin’s victory during the first round of voting has become the main ammunition for the Kremlin’s propagandists, busily going about brainwashing voters. Russia’s main polling organizations – the Public Opinion Foundation, the Russian Public Opinion Research Center, and the Levada Center – are literally chomping at the bit to please the Kremlin with bigger and better numbers. A carefully selected list of sparring partners gives the painfully tired argument “and who, if not Him” more weight.

The opponents of Putin who are making a formal bid for the presidency of this great country actually look a lot like comic personalities from Soviet cinema. The troika of Sergei Mironov, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and Gennady Zyuganov bears a close resemblance to Leonid Gaidai’s Three Soviet Stooges, and in some cases bear physical similarities as well. Meanwhile, the lone figure of Mikhail Prokhorov smacks of the lanky provincial nobility. In fact, Putin’s hysterical electoral campaign seems to imply that Putin sees his relationship with Russia as a dilemma reminiscent of Gaidai’s classic comedy about kidnapping a woman in hopes of marrying her: “Either I bring her to get the marriage certificate signed, or she brings me to the prosecutor.”

Of course, it’s hard to argue with the logic of those who, for aesthetic reasons, say we should “cross out” all the names on our ballots. But here we need to consider that the Central Electoral Commission might count any ballots marked like this – “against all” – as spoiled, and not count them as part of the overall number of votes cast.

Therefore, before we attempt to solve the Kremlin’s puzzle, let’s review the raw data:

1. The March 4 election will not be legitimate, since each stage of this most important political process, from the passing of electoral legislation to the opportunities for registered candidates to carry out full-fledged campaigns, involved rude violations that infringed upon the constitutional rights of Russian citizens.

2. The ideological basis of the protest movement consists of the demands set forth in the resolutions taken on Bolotnaya Square and on Sakharov Prospect. Among those, one of the conditions for normalizing political life in the country is listed as an early presidential election, carried out according to new regulations that actually correspond to the Russian constitution.

3. Regardless of what results Churov’s electoral commission announces on the night of March 4, we need to continue the fight to hold early presidential and parliamentary elections. Even if we imagine for a second that the winner’s last name is more than five letters long, this does not in principle change anything in regards to our demands to provide Russian citizens with the right to choose a legitimate government through free and fair elections.

Following this logic, we’d ought to look at the March 4 election as an opportunity for us once and for all to delegitimize the Putin regime – and, correspondingly, as an opportunity to mobilize a significant number of non-apathetic Russian citizens to come out to mass protests. Therefore, it doesn’t make any difference who we vote for, as long as we vote against Putin.

There’s no need to torment yourself with redundant doubts – we will not be participating in a real presidential election on March 4. On this day we will be holding a de-facto referendum in expressing our distrust of Vladimir Putin, and a high voter turnout could quite possibly upset all the calculations by the Kremlin’s political spin doctors. And the four boxes across from the names that the Kremlin’s will has allowed to be on that list – these are just four ways that you can say no to the swindlers and thieves who have usurped power in Russia.

According to the party, the country’s opposition parties are “getting ahead of themselves” by holding protests against expected falsifications of the upcoming election.

Party secretary Sergei Neverov expressed certainty that both the non-systemic and systemic opposition “are looking to justify their fiascos ahead of time because they know that none of their candidates can present Vladimir Putin with any kind of real competition.”

Neverov believes that the election results will be denounced by the opposition as falsified no matter what they are. In his opinion, oppositionists “don’t need fair presidential elections; they’re prepared to use any electoral campaign as a means to discredit the existing political system.”

He also argued that opposition forces were “acting irresponsibly” and that they saw the fate of the country as “loose change.”

The complaints come a week after State Duma deputies from United Russia asked deputies from the Communist Party, Liberal Democratic Party and A Just Russia to “make a joint anti-orange revolution” resolution in response to a wave of mass protests against blatant electoral fraud in December parliamentary elections. The three parties rejected the plea.

According to Sergei Davidis, one of the organizers of the “For Fair Elections” march, a sticking point was that Deputy Mayor Aleksandr Gorbenko proposed a route that would keep the protesters outside of the Garden Ring, which encircles central Moscow. When Gorbenko rejected oppositionists’ requests to allow the march to be held closer to the center of the city, the organizers apparently felt they had no other choice but to agree.

But even the status of that proposal – the city’s own – was unclear.

“We were told that we’ll get an official written response tomorrow per our request to hold the march from Luzhniki to Krimsky Bridge,” said Davidis. “We’ll have to wait and see what we’re going to do after that.”

Left Front coordinator Sergei Udaltsov also confirmed that organizers had no luck in reaching an agreement over the route with city authorities.

He stressed that the city had insisted that the oppositionists gather at Luzhniki since the very beginning of negotiations, and had refused to make any concessions.

“Organizers of the march and rally still intend to insist on holding the events in the center of the city,” said Udaltsov.

The mayor’s office first turned down the march’s proposed route during a meeting on January 20, when Gorbenko claimed that it would be impossible “from the point of view of safety.” However, the move followed a long tradition on the part of Moscow authorities of driving oppositionists to the less-visible outskirts of the city under the pretext of preventing traffic problems.

The February 4 march will be the third mass protest against falsified election results in the past two months. The demonstrations have been the largest Russia has seen since the fall of the Soviet Union, and so far more than 19 thousand people have pledged on Facebook to turn out for the next one.

Yashin was released on Wednesday at 2:30 am in northwest Moscow. According to his lawyer Vadim Prokhorov, he was feeling fine.

Navalny was released from another facility at 2:35 am to a waiting crowd of journalists and supporters. The whistleblowing blogger said that intends to file a complaint against police for forcibly transferring him from a detention center to a police station.

“Ilya Yashin and I were asked if we’d like to go to the police station, but we declined. Several hours ago I was called supposedly to sign a document, after which someone in a t-shirt and flip-flops forced me into a car and took me away,” Navalny said. “I consider this to be unlawful and am going to complain about these actions by the police.”

Both oppositionists were arrested on December 5 following a mass rally at Moscow’s Chistye Prudy and sentenced to 15 days in jail for supposedly “violating police orders.” They were among 300 other demonstrators arrested out of a crowd of approximately 10,000; about 60 were given jail sentences from between 10 and 15 days each.

Oppositionists have scheduled another mass rally to protest the election results for December 24.

Olga Kurnosova, head of the St. Petersburg branch of the United Civil Front, said that protesters gathered on Pionerskaya Square and shouted slogans including “Power to the millions, not to millionaires!” “Putin, step down!” and “We are for fair elections!”

Along with Kurnosova, Oksana Dmitrieva from A Just Russia and leading opposition politician Boris Nemtsov made speeches at the rally.

While the protest had been sanctioned by city authorities, witnesses reported that around ten armored military trucks were seen making their way towards the center of the city on Sunday morning.

In addition, police briefly detained Nemtsov at the Moskovsky train station and demanded an explanation for his trip to the city.

According to Grani.ru, the police presented Nemtsov with a document labeling him as a “leader of extremists.” The opposition leader was released after explaining that he had come to participate in a sanctioned rally.

The incident compacted Nemtsov’s fears that he is being watched. “The police continue to follow me earnestly, and I suspect that my freedom could soon come to an end,” he said.

Accusations of “extremist” activity are commonly used by Russian government authorities to persecute or marginalize opposition politicians.

Also on Sunday, the Russian Central Electoral Commission rejected an application by fellow opposition leader Eduard Limonov to run for president.

The commission stated that the rejection was based on a lack of minutes from a meeting that is required by law to be held in support of the candidate.

Limonov denounced the decision as politically motivated and promised to challenge it in court. On December 15, the oppositionist found himself without a physical place to hold the meeting, since the hall he had rented was abruptly closed for “urgent repairs” the day of the meeting.

On Wednesday, the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) accepted the documents required to file the request. “Commission member Elena Dubrovina gave Limonov a document confirming that the necessary documents have been submitted in the appropriate form and within the appropriate timeframe,” said Aleksandr Averin, executive committee member of Limonov’s Other Russia party.

According to Averin, the CEC should announce whether it will or not it will register Limonov on December 20 – four days before opposition activists have scheduled another mass demonstration to protest what they say are fraudulent parliamentary election results.

Generally marginalized by the Kremlin and Russia’s state-run media, Limonov was nearly prevented from gathering the proper number of signatures needed to apply for registration when a December 11 meeting of his supporters was suspiciously cancelled.

Writing on his LiveJournal, Limonov described how police had hung banners explaining that the building where the meeting was to be held was cancelled due to “urgent repairs.”

The oppositionist described the conversation between him and an officer at the scene:

Me – You are violating the law, by law we have the right [to hold this meeting]; on November 30 I submitted a written announcement to the CEC that we would be holding a meeting to launch my candidacy at precisely this address, since we paid rent and so on.
Lieutenant – The police have nothing to do with this, the property owners are making repairs… we were called in to keep order.
Me – This is a political crime… they were holding meetings in these very auditoriums yesterday evening…

The abrupt closure was eerily similar to tactics used to prevent opposition leader Garry Kasparov from running for Russian president in 2007.

Russian electoral law requires 500 signatures to be collected at a meeting of a potential candidate’s supporters in order for the candidate to be registered. Forced to collect signatures in a nearby bus, Limonov nevertheless obtained 800.

One of the conclusions that can be reached from the December 4 elections is that the “Party of Swindlers and Thieves” has, once again, brilliantly lived up to its name. Cheating and thievery have ceased to even be an open secret, and it involved not only the massive falsifications that the party of power needed in order to hold on to their crumbling power vertical, but also the sharp rise in civil activeness, with large number of people unexpectedly refusing to play the role of silent viewers in the Kremlin’s marionette theater.

Experts in electoral math will soon undoubtedly be able to show us graphics of United Russia’s actual results. The unnatural vote spread across the various regions of the country, along with the numerous violations documented by observers at polling stations and in electoral commissions, will provide irrefutable evidence that Churov’s agency worked to over-fulfill their plan at the rate of a Stakhanovite.

By all accounts, United Russia’s objective results even across the entire country aren’t above 30 percent, and in Moscow and St. Petersburg the party in power suffered a crushing defeat, loosing not only to the Communist Party, but even, most likely, to A Just Russia. This casts doubt upon the professional integrity of our so-called sociological services, whose “public opinion polls” predicted just a week ago that United Russia would have the support of 53 percent of the population. But if the Foundation for Public Opinion and the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion aren’t ashamed of their Kremlin-provided roofs, then one would hope to hear from the Levada Center, which holds its reputation more dear, an explanation as to why their predictions turned out to be even more optimistic than the final results of Mr. Churov’s agency.

Another result of December 4 is that we can be certain that the period of social apathy that Russian society succumbed to ten years ago is now a relic of the past.

But today’s main question, of course, is about the readiness of the systemic opposition to begin a fight against United Russia’s dictate. It would be naive to say that the Communist Party, LDPR, or United Russia together with Yabloko are going to achieve a full nullification of the falsified elections, but the people who voted for them have the right to expect, at minimum, a demand to hold a recount where mass violations are uncovered, and the criminal prosecution of officials guilty of committing and hiding these crimes.

In addition, the systemic opposition is going to have to resolve the question of fielding candidates for president. Now that it’s been spooked, the government is going to try to minimize its risks and prevent the rise of any notable figures who are capable of uniting the protest electorate, which is exploding in front of their eyes. It’s not worth waiting for any revelations from the Communist Party or LDPR. Although, the Communists are completely capable of finding a more suitable candidate than Zyuganov, who feels at home in his comfortable role as the government’s sparring partner. But for A Just Russia, if it is, contrary to expectations, prepared to challenge the Putin regime, one potential solution comes to mind. Oksana Dmitrieva, whose success in a presidential election is something out of a science fiction novel – at least in the two capitals – could become the candidate whose presence makes a second round entirely plausible.

The events of the forthcoming week will put an end to the dispute that the nonsystemic opposition has been having for the past several months. The various plans of action for December 4 rested on one key point of disagreement: whether or not conditions exist where the Kremlin-fed systemic opposition could agree upon a bunt against Putin. A more favorable situation than the present is impossible to imagine.

If Mironov and Ko demonstrate their readiness to begin a fight to dismantle the regime by unleashing a real pre-electoral campaign attacking the national leader with the same principles with which they were ready to “flush the Party of Swindlers and Thieves down the toilet,” then I will be ready to publicly admit my mistake in judging the ineffectiveness of existing electoral mechanisms.

But if the actions of the systemic opposition lead to the emasculation of popular protest and turn out to be just a storm in a teacup that ends with the redistribution of Duma portfolios and financial flows, then I expect that my opponents will publicly admit that it is impossible to change the Putin regime within any sort of framework of electoral procedures and will begin to join in with our collective efforts to create an alternative list of voters. Incidentally, this is one of the very rare cases where I’d like to admit that I’m wrong…