2008 presidential election in Russia

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The 2008 presidential election in Russia took place on March 2, 2008 . It is the fifth election since the formation of the Russian Federation , in which the President of Russia was elected. President Vladimir Putin , who has been in office since 2000, did not run again in this election because the Russian constitution does not allow the president to have more than two terms in a row. Instead, the Putin candidate Dmitry Medvedev won .

Original forecasts

Candidates loyal to Putin

Dmitry Medvedev

Among the possible presidential candidates who would continue Vladimir Putin's policy and therefore would have the support of state power, were the two First Vice-Prime Ministers, Dmitry Medvedev and Sergei Ivanov . The two were non-party, but enjoyed the support of the pro-government United Russia party . After Viktor Subkov's appointment as prime minister on September 14, 2007, he was also considered a possible successor to Putin; he himself had not ruled out the possibility of his candidacy.

According to an opinion poll carried out in September 2007, Medvedev and Ivanov would have been the most promising candidates at that time: in the event of a second ballot they would have received 59 and 41 percent of the vote, respectively.

On December 10th, Putin announced that, according to his wishes, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev would become the new head of state. In addition, Dmitry Medvedev is supported by the Just Russia , Citizenship and the Agrarian Party . At first, experts did not rule out that Putin could support another candidate.

Opposition candidates

Gennady Zyuganov

Several opposition Russian parties also wanted to send their top candidates into the race. It was expected that the Communist Party will be represented by its chairman Gennady Zyuganov again this time . The liberal opposition sought to put forward a unified candidate who would represent all liberal forces. In September 2007, the opposition alliance newly founded The Other Russia from its members Garry Kasparov chosen as unified presidential candidate. Nevertheless, several other liberal politicians expressed their intention to stand, including the chairman of the Yabloko party Grigori Jawlinski , the former central bank chief Viktor Gerashchenko  , the human rights activist Vladimir Bukovsky   and the Archangel Mayor Alexander Donskoy . Former Prime Minister and today's opponent of Putin, Mikhail Kassyanov , was officially nominated as a candidate by his People's Democratic Union movement on December 8th .

Other candidates were the LDPR chairman Vladimir Zhirinovsky and the former Duma spokesman Gennady Seleznyov .

Admission by the Central Election Commission

On December 16, the registration period at the Central Electoral Commission ended and on December 18, its head Vladimir Churov announced the six presidential candidates:

Grigori Jawlinski had withdrawn his candidacy in favor of Vladimir Bukovsky. His candidacy was rejected by the Central Election Commission because, according to the Russian constitution, a presidential candidate must have lived in Russia for the past 10 years. Vladimir Bukowski has lived in Great Britain for many decades . Garry Kasparov missed the registration deadline because, according to him, he could not find a room in all of Moscow to hold a party meeting.

On December 26th, Boris Nemtsov announced that he would withdraw his candidacy in favor of Mikhail Kassyanov. According to the law, candidates from parties not represented in the Duma (Bogdanov and Kassyanov) each have to submit two million signatures in support of their candidacy to the Central Election Commission by mid-January.

The Central Electoral Commission of the Russian Federation announced on January 27, 2008 that 13.38 percent of the support signatures for Mikhail Kassyanov were incorrect. The electoral law only allows an error rate of 5 percent. Therefore, he was not allowed to vote for the president. The attorney general's office opened a fraud case against the campaign bureau Kassyanov. He will forego a lawsuit because the Russian courts are not independent. Kassyanov called the Russian government totalitarian and called for a boycott of the presidential elections.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) did not want to send any election observers to Russia on February 7, 2008, according to the OSCE office responsible for election observation in Warsaw. According to statements by OSCE spokesman Göran Lennmarker, the Russian authorities have placed excessive restrictions on election observers. Russia criticized the organization, which is largely seen there as a geopolitical tool of the West, for allegedly arbitrary and degrading demands aimed at causing a scandal.

Election result

The provisional official final result of the election after counting 100% of the votes was given by the electoral commission as follows:

space candidate Number of votes Share of votes
1 Dmitry Medvedev 52,530,712 70.28%
2 Gennady Zyuganov 13,243,550 17.72%
3 Vladimir Zhirinovsky 6,988,510 9.34%
4th Andrei Bogdanov 968,344 1.29%
"Against all" 1,015,533 1.36%
Total 74,746,649 100.00%

According to the electoral commission's calculation, the turnout was 69.71 percent.

Allegations of manipulation

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) boycotted the elections with reference to the "impossibility of carrying out its observer mission". The observer mission of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe described the elections as "neither free nor fair".

Internet news services reported noticeable changes in voter lists. In July 2007 there were officially 107.062 million eligible voters, shortly before the parliamentary elections this number rose to 109.146 million, while at the presidential election there were officially fewer eligible voters at 106.999 million. While the Central Election Commission explains these differences with an update of the electoral lists, critics suspect that the official number of voters was increased before the parliamentary elections, since the absolute number of votes determines the distribution of seats. In order to achieve a high turnout in the presidential elections, in which, in contrast, the percentage of the vote decides, the number of eligible voters has been reduced again. Voters struck from the registers who appeared to cast their votes were then - again illegally - included in the electoral roll, even if they could not prove that they were assigned to the relevant constituency.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Levada Center: Survey on the 2008 elections; last accessed on October 31, 2007 ( memorial from November 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  2. newsru.com; last accessed on October 31, 2007
  3. newsru.com; last accessed on October 31, 2007
  4. lenta.ru; last accessed on October 31, 2007
  5. http://www.newsru.com/russia/08dec2007/kas.html
  6. today - Kremlin critics excluded from voting  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Accessed January 26, 2008)@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.heute.de  
  7. Focus: No election observers to Russia (from February 7, 2008)
  8. news.ntv.ru, March 4, 2008, 1:32 p.m. ( Memento of March 5, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ^ OSCE to boycott Russian election . In: BBC . February 7, 2008 ( bbc.co.uk [accessed April 19, 2016]).
  10. ^ By Adrian Blomfield in Moscow and Duncan Hooper: Russian election. In: Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved April 19, 2016 .
  11. http://www.newsru.com/russia/06mar2008/elections.html

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