The Russsian Central Electoral Commission on Saturday rejected an application by a candidate calling for peace to stand in next year’s presidential elections.
The commission cited “mistakes in documents” submitted by Yekaterina Duntsova, a former journalist and city councilor campaigning “for peace and democratic processes,” Russian television reported.
Commission chairwoman Ella Pamfilova said the members unanimously rejected Duntsova’s bid to stand in polls that Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to win comfortably.
Photo: AFP
Putin confirmed this month that he would participate in the election, which is to be held over three days beginning March 15.
The commission said Duntsova could not go on to the next stage of gathering thousands of supporters’ signatures.
“You are a young woman, you have everything ahead of you,” Pamfilova told her.
Duntsova, 40, had filed documents to stand in the March race as an independent candidate. She was required to provide documents proving that a group of at least 500 people had held a meeting backing her.
“A people’s initiative is not needed, is not welcomed,” Duntsova told journalists afterward, saying she would not have time to file another application as an independent candidate.
She wrote on social media that she would file an appeal against the ruling with the Russian Supreme Court.
She also urged the leadership of Russian United Democratic Party Yabloko to nominate her as its candidate.
Yabloko, Russia’s oldest democratic party, “should not stand on the sidelines. Russians should have a choice,” she wrote on Telegram.
Duntsova told journalists on Saturday “we are now waiting for some official, public answer on whether [Yabloko] are prepared to support me so we meet the deadline” of Jan. 1.
Yabloko cofounder Grigory Yavlinsky said in a YouTube video broadcast on Saturday that the party is not nominating a candidate.
The 71-year-old was unable to comment on Duntsova’s request for nomination, saying he “had no idea” about her.
Candidates from political parties lacking lawmakers in the national parliament, such as Yabloko, have a less arduous procedure to participate than independents. They have to gather signatures of 100,000 supporters by the end of January, while independent candidates have to find 300,000.
Duntsova said she was sure her supporters had no illusions about the outcome of the presidential “elections” in inverted commas.
However, “you must not do nothing,” as standing as a candidate is the “last legal opportunity for citizens to express their disagreement with the policies of the current authorities,” she wrote on Telegram.
Pamfilova on Saturday said that 29 people have filed to run for the presidency.
Moscow has for years sidelined opposition figures from elections and political life, a clampdown that accelerated after the Kremlin ordered Russian troops into Ukraine last year.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
Residents across Japan’s Pacific coast yesterday rushed to higher ground as tsunami warnings following a massive earthquake off Russia’s far east resurfaced painful memories and lessons from the devastating 2011 earthquake and nuclear disaster. Television banners flashed “TSUNAMI! EVACUATE!” and similar warnings as most broadcasters cut regular programming to issue warnings and evacuation orders, as tsunami waves approached Japan’s shores. “Do not be glued to the screen. Evacuate now,” a news presenter at public broadcaster NHK shouted. The warnings resurfaced memories of the March 11, 2011, earthquake, when more than 15,000 people died after a magnitude 9 tremor triggered a massive tsunami that