22nd January, 2018
The number of people who have expressed their intention to run in the upcoming Russian presidential election is the highest its been since 2000, the Russian Civil Initiatives Committee (CIC) said Monday.
The Russian presidential election is scheduled to take place on March 18.
Since the launch of the campaign on Dec. 18, Russia’s Central Election Commission has been notified of 70 presidential bids.
Nevertheless, only 36 candidates came to the commission and provided the necessary documents.
“Compared to the elections in 2000 to 2012, the number of those expressing intention to participate in the current campaign hit the record.
“We believe it is linked to the easing of the requirements to the number of signatures,” CIC’s report read.
In 2000, the candidates had to collect 500,000 signatures endorsing the nomination.
Between 2004 and 2012 they had to collect two million signatures, whereas now party candidates only have to collect 100,000 signatures, and independent nominees have to get 300,000.
The CIC also noted that the dropout rate for candidates was 53 per cent.
According to the report, over a quarter of the nominees are women, and most of the candidates are politicians and entrepreneurs.
No fewer than 150 foreign lawmakers will arrive in Russia as observers of the March presidential election at the State Duma’s invitation, local media reported on Monday, citing its sources.
“There will absolutely be various politicians: left, right, centrists. They will monitor the election process in all the country’s regions, including Crimea — nearly 10 parliamentarians will go there.
“The State Duma has prepared almost 150 invitations for the lawmakers,” one of the sources told Russia’s Izvestia newspaper.
Leonid Slutsky, the chairman of the Russian parliament lower house’s International Affairs Committee, confirmed to the newspaper that the parliament had invited the observers to “objectively reflect the course of the presidential election in the global informational and political space.”
According to the newspaper, the observers will come from almost all EU states: Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Slovakia and others.
Representatives from Brazil, Israel, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Africa, Thailand and Vietnam will also observe the March vote.
Member of the Russian Central Election Commission Vasily Likhachev told the newspaper that the observers would not be composed of pro-Russian politicians, but of “people who are experienced in the election monitoring [process] and are competent from a legal standpoint.”
The head of Russia’s Republic of Crimea, Sergey Aksenov, stressed that the peninsula was ready to host all observers and that their arrival would manifest positive changes among the political establishment as well as public opinion, according to the newspaper.