Russian officials should review opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s calls for an election boycott to see if they might be breaking the law, the Kremlin said yesterday, hinting at possible legal repercussions.
In a widely anticipated decision, Russia’s top election body on Monday formally barred anticorruption crusader Navalny from running in the presidential election in March.
Navalny promptly put out a video statement, saying that the ban shows that Russian President Vladimir “Putin is terribly scared and is afraid of running against me,” and called on his supporters to stay away from the vote in protest.
Photo: Evgeny Feldman / Navalny Campaign via AP
Putin, who has been in power for 18 years, announced his bid for re-election earlier this month, but so far has refrained from canvassing.
In contrast, his most prominent rival, Navalny, has been campaigning aggressively all year, reaching out to the most remote parts of the nation.
Opinion polls say that Putin should easily win the March vote.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov yesterday would not comment on the Russian Central Election Commission’s decision to bar Navalny, but said the “calls for boycott ought to be carefully studied to see if they are breaking the law.”
Peskov also rejected suggestions that Navalny’s absence on the ballot could dent the legitimacy of Putin’s possible re-election.
The Russian law does not say calls for an election boycott are illegal, but authorities last year blocked access to several Web sites calling for the boycott.
Navalny rose to prominence in 2009 with investigations into official corruption and became a protest leader when hundreds of thousands took to the streets across Russia in 2011 to protest electoral fraud. A few years later and after several short-term spells in jail, Navalny faced two separate sets of charges of fraud that were viewed as political retribution aimed at barring him from running for office.
In his only official campaign before his first conviction took effect, Navalny garnered 30 percent of the vote in the race for Moscow mayor in 2013.
The EU said in a statement yesterday that the decision to keep Navalny off the ballot “casts a serious doubt on political pluralism in Russia and the prospect of democratic elections next year.”
EU Foreign Affairs and Security Policy spokesperson Maja Kocijancic pointed to a European Court of Human Rights ruling that Navalny was denied the right to a fair trial when he was convicted in 2013.
“Politically motivated charges shouldn’t be used against political participation,” Kocijancic said.
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