Russian Presidential Election Update: The Dictatorship Rejects the Center-Right Candidate

As expected, the Russian electoral commission last week rejected the presidential candidacy of the center-right anti-war candidate, Boris Nadezhdin, even though the municipal legislator, professor and television pundit had more than twice the requisite signatures. As I have posted, under Russian election law, candidate from parties not represented in Parliament, such as Nadezhdin’s, may either be nominated by a meeting of a certain number of people or gather the signatures of at least 100,000 people from a minimum number from each of at least 40 regions across the Russian Federation. Hundreds of thousands of Russians stood in lines in sub-zero weather to sign for Nadezhdin, whose platform was to end Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and to engage with the West on friendlier terms. Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and exiled Russian leaders supported Nadezhdin, whose support had unnerved the tyrannical regime of Vladimir Putin, the ex-Soviet intelligence officer. Putin has used elections to gain power and to rule as an autocrat for over 24 years as basic freedoms are not tolerated. In addition to journalists and human rights activists, political opponents are persecuted, jailed, assaulted, poisoned, murdered or driven into exile, and sometimes even murdered abroad. Only token opponents and parties that do not oppose Putin are tolerated to provide the appearance of democratic and thus popular support, while the Kremlin controls media, using state control for propaganda and disinformation. Nadezhdin plans to appeal the electoral commission’s challenges of certain signatures, but Putin has long since eliminated judicial independence in Russia. The authoritarian Putin had succeeded in eliminating term limits so he could continue to rule for another six years. There is no chance Nadezhdin would be allowed to win the presidential election, but his candidacy would be an platform for grievances against Putin and give hope to the Russian people for freedom, an embarrassment and threat which the Putin regime cannot allow.