Russian anti-war presidential candidate Boris Nadezhdin says he has been banned from running against Vladimir Putin in the carefully managed presidential elections in March.
Earlier on Thursday the central election commission (CEC) said it had found “irregularities” in over 9,000 of more than 100,000 signatures of support submitted by Nadezhdin.
That figure was three times higher than the allowable 5% error rate and provides grounds for the commission to disqualify Nadezhdin.
CEC’s deputy chair Nikolai Bulaev said last week it had found 11 “dead souls” among the more than 100,000 signatures of support submitted by Nadezhdin.
The only thing I am surprised about is the fact he is still alive.
Why? Navalny is still alive. It’s not exactly hard to understand that making your prominent opposition figureheads martyrs is a dangerous game to play.
Navalny is only alive because Russia’s assassination attempt failed in spectacularly public fashion and it would be too obvious now. In this case it’s probably just not worth it if a clerical error can keep him in check. Jail or murder are never off the table under Putin’s regime if it starts to become the more expedient option.
I mean, the whole world saw the failed assassination attempt. There was no ambiguity about the circumstances of his poisoning. That happened during a period when Russians had full access to western media.
That’s how you know he is probably a plant. /s ( I actually don’t know if he is legit opposition or not).
For now.
Can anyone explain to me how 9% is over three times more than 5% ?
Sure, just come right over here by this open window and all will be explained.
Same way 11 “dead souls” among the more than 100,000 signatures is an unexpected number given natural mortality not even counting open windows
Russian math works in mysterious ways
That one stumped me for a bit too - I think the minimum threshold is 100k, but he had more than that (~150k for the maths to check out)
This, though, means that even ignoring the “irregular” signatures he would still have been well over that threshold, so there also would have been no motive for him to even want to falsify signatures.
Three times 5% is 15%, and that just gets further from 9000 the more total signatures he had. There’s no math that works out.
Guess that answers the question of whether he was a Kremlin plant.
Does it? Seems like you could just bar him to gain him legitimacy then let him run in the end to show fairness.
Considering Putin signed legislation a handful of years ago making him dictator for life, why are they even bothering to hold pretend elections?
Because even dictators don’t have power from “god”. Power comes from a group of people and autocracies differ from democracies by the size of this power-legitimizing group (I strongly recommend book “Dictator’s Handbook”).
In Russia this group consists of oligarchs and army generals. And those people need “normal” people to not be against government to work without complaining and revolting. One easy way to increase that satisfaction is by running huge propaganda camping and then organising theatre of choice.
Then high election result, makes people not revolt (cause they “chose” the ruler), reassures oligarchs and generals that it’s a good thing that you’re the leader and finally you can tell the international community that you’re a democracy.
So there’s a few reasons for elections in autocracies
Because narcissists are super insecure, and dictatorships are a game of stupid musical chairs featuring the idiots at the top in power doing all sorts of shit that does not make sense to appease the big idiot at the top.
Remember how Trump had this need for people to grovel and beg before him? It’s that same thing but institutionalized.
Im shocked. Shocked!
… Well not that shocked.
I wonder if he actually thought he had a chance.
Like, does anyone really think they have any sort of possibility of being elected?
Against someone who wouldn’t hesitate to bomb entire apartment complexes to try and pin it on an opponent? Or who doesn’t hesitate to outright have people black bagged?
It still undermines Putin a bit, think that’s what the goal is
It is, partly. Nadezhdin has been part of the Russian politics for decades, authored and co-authored many laws and took part in many initiatives; him running for president is basically him exercising his passive right to be elected, but as he himself said, he’s been thinking about running for president since Summer 2023.
He’s been invited to the Russian propaganda TV shows numerous times as a liberal scapegoat of sorts - they’d just try to portray him and people like him (anti-war or anti-Putin or both, basically people who want freedom and peace for their own country and for everyone else), often failing, as there never was any clever way to make him shut up; the man knows many of Putin’s cronies because he’s been in politics for that long, and he’s very smart with what he’s saying because he knows what kind of narrative gets you assassinated or jailed.
From everything I’ve heard from him, Nadezhdin just wanted to act in the most influential way he saw for himself and for others, coincidentally being the safest one, too. He had hesitated at first, but quickly joined the race to get the signatures after Duntsova got turned down, and he really believes in change and progress and a brighter, non-violent future for Russia. It’s a good thing, too, because as we’ve seen times and times again, resorting to violence to deal with one regime in hopes of building a new, better system for each and for all is a sure way to attract and amass even more people who should never bear anywhere near any sort of power, and do so precisely in and around power, ultimately leading to greater terror.
To me, Nadezhdin seems like a pragmatic man who can believe, which is important, and he readily pursued the chance to become a candidate for the elections because of it, but also because he did speak, extensively, with the current Russian opposition (the ones that haven’t been murdered or jailed, at least) and cooperated with them (one would be more accurate to say that it was vise versa, actually, so props to them putting weight on the attempts and spreading the word, as well as assisting him during the process) under some shared understanding that, in times of great despair and misery and seemingly inescapable reign of darker, evil, greedy, murderous forces, when calling for peace and life is a crime, when people have been carefully manipulated into disunity and feeling small - it’s in these times that it’s important to do something to make people realize that they’re not alone, they’re not few, but that they’re many, that there’s something they can try and do to show the regime that they do not agree with it, nor do they want it.
Apart from this pursuit, very important and uplifting and very much needed by the Russian populace evident by the last several weeks, there is also an important factor of actually putting pressure on the regime - despite what many may believe, the current regime doesn’t completely ignore everything; very few regimes do or can, actually, but the Putin’s regime especially so, as we’ve seen time and time again through various displays and in various forms. Of course, it is far from perfect, but it’s not insignificant or minuscule for many reasons: it makes the regime move under pressure and uncertainty, which leads to rushed decisions, which leads to mistakes, which leads to opportunities… which is ultimately good for everyone, as without Putin and his regime, there is no war, for he’s the sole “benefactor”, if there’s anything of benefit left for him in this stupid mistake.
Last but not least, when the regime sees that some “irrelevant and small” candidate manages to gather an absurdly large and arbitrary number of signatures (try and find another country where you need to get 100,000 perfectly prepared signatures along with names and addresses and passport numbers before you can run for president), with lines of people popping all over the country despite what felt like its coldest days of the year (for larger parts, at least), then you know that there’s still a significant chunk of people that won’t be happy with, say, another broad mobilization or martial laws or anything like that - for every person who managed to go and leave their signature (along with some sensitive personal data), there’s who knows how many more people who felt too scared or simply couldn’t leave their signatures because there weren’t any collectors or posts near them (some had to travel 100+ km, some don’t have the opportunity, as Russia’s very, very big), and there’s even more people who probably could’ve signed if they had known about the whole thing if Nadezhdin had access to TV and radio to spread the word, as it should be during election such as these (in more democratic country). Nobody can say for certain what’s going to come out of these last several weeks, but Putin and his lapdogs surely have enough to consider now - and a lot of stress that, again, will ultimately help in turning things for the better.
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You’re welcome and пожалуйста. I consider my English skills one of (if not the) most important assets of mine and try to use it to offer some perspective from within the anti-war/Putin population; I can’t say I’ve seen many other Russians doing the same in places I visit, so I try to be the voice when I can.
Sometime ago I considered making a blog for that kind of thing or something, but ultimately fell out of it as I doubt I’d keep it well enough to gain proper traction; and it’s much more work than writing comments and talking to people on a more personal level, which may divert a huge chunk of my attention, too, resulting in a clouded perspective.
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In this interview he mentioned that he was waiting for someone more well-known to run for president and volunteer to work as an aide for them. But noone did and he realized that he should do it.
On the real though can their election potentially change their leadership or is it literally a waste of time?
ha. no. its performative to give the illusion to the braindead russians that they aren’t in a dictatorship
Imagine if Carlson asked putin about that. But no. He preferred licking Putin’s ass
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Wednesday’s decision was widely expected and comes after a working group of the CEC on Monday claimed it had found 15% of the supporters’ signatures he submitted to be invalid.
Nadezhdin, a veteran politician who has associated with Kremlin insiders and the opposition to Putin, has been waging a last-minute campaign to get on the ballot for the election, with thousands of Russians standing for hours in the freezing cold to add their signature in his support.
Nadezhdin said in his election manifesto that Putin had made a “fatal mistake by starting the special military operation” in Ukraine, the Kremlin’s preferred term for its invasion.
Russian state media ramped up its smear campaign against Nadezhdin in recent weeks, which underlined the Kremlin’s concern about the unexpected show of support for a politician who was previously unknown among the general population.
Another openly anti-war candidate, Yekaterina Duntsova, has already been disqualified by the elections commission, which refused to accept her nomination because of alleged errors in her paperwork, including spelling mistakes.
If he remains in power until then, his tenure will surpass even that of Joseph Stalin, who ruled the Soviet Union for 29 years, making Putin the longest-serving Moscow leader since the Russian empire.
The original article contains 579 words, the summary contains 204 words. Saved 65%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Not a shock to anyone.
