Presidential election in Russia 2012

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The 2012 presidential election in Russia took place on March 4, 2012 .

It was the first election in which the President of Russia was appointed for a term of six instead of the previous four years. This was done on the basis of a law passed at the end of 2008. The latter also extended the legislative period of the State Duma from the 2011 elections to five instead of the previous four years.

Dmitri Medvedev , who was elected in 2008, himself proposed his predecessor and successor Vladimir Putin for election at the party congress , after Putin was constitutionally not allowed to run again in 2008 after two consecutive terms in office.

Admitted candidates

Wladimir Putin

At the party congress of the ruling United Russia party , the incumbent Prime Minister and Russian President from 2000 to 2008, Vladimir Putin , announced that he would run as a candidate in the presidential elections. This was previously proposed by the incumbent President Dmitry Medvedev . This should then take over the office of Prime Minister.

The support of Putin by the Moscow Patriarch Kyrill I caused a controversy .

Putin led his election campaign with a series of programmatic newspaper articles in which he carried out his positions on various topics. In his sixth article, published on February 20, he addressed a number of questions in connection with the modernization of Russia's arms industry, which he advocated . The armament he promised was necessary , among other things, because of the missile defense system planned by the USA and NATO . It is important to prevent a "repetition of the tragedy of 1941 " when the country had to pay for "unwillingness with huge human losses". The proportion of voters orienting themselves on military issues was estimated at ten percent. On February 27, his article “Russia and the Changing World” appeared in the Moskowskije Novosti , in which Putin presented his foreign policy positions.

Sergei Mironov

The former chairman of the Russian Federation Council Sergei Mironov was traded as a possible candidate. Some experts rated his chances as "not bad". As early as December 2010, Mironov said in an interview that his party ( Just Russia ) would not support any candidate proposed by United Russia. Mironov was given no chance against Vladimir Putin; In addition, Mironov had already participated in the presidential elections in 2004, but at that time he supported Vladimir Putin's candidacy rather than his own - Mironov is considered a close friend of Putin.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky

Vladimir Zhirinovsky , party leader of the LDPR , announced his presidential candidacy on September 12, 2010 in a television interview. Zhirinovsky described himself as the “third alternative to the Kremlin candidates” (this meant Putin and Medvedev) and imagined realistic chances of winning the election.

Gennady Zyuganov

Gennady Zyuganov is the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation . On April 17, 2011, Zyuganov said that he would run as a candidate in the presidential election and that "a number of different organizations" would support him. Zyuganov has run three times in the Russian presidential elections (1996, 2000 and 2008).

Mikhail Prokhorov

Mikhail Prokhorov had held out the prospect of running for the presidential election if his Right Cause party were to become the second largest force in the Duma elections. However, he resigned on September 15, 2011 from this party.

On December 12, 2011, Prokhorov surprisingly announced his candidacy for the upcoming presidential election.

After collecting the required 2 million valid signatures from citizens of the Russian Federation in support of him, Prokhorov was the only candidate who was not nominated by a Duma party to stand for election in January 2012, in contrast to Grigory Jawlinski, whose Signatures have been declared invalid.

Candidates excluded from the election

Admitted to the collection of signatures

Candidates from parties not represented in the Duma or proposed by a group of voters and not by a party are required to collect at least 2 million valid signatures in support of them within a few weeks. Five politicians were admitted to the collection of signatures, in addition to Mikhail Prokhorov, who was eligible for election, Grigori Jawlinski, Dmitri Mesenzew, Svetlana Peunova, Viktor Tscherepkow and Rinat Khamiyev:

  • Dmitri Fyodorowitsch Mesentsew, Governor of Irkutsk Oblast , proposed by a railway union
  • Svetlana Mikhailovna Peunova, head of the Volja party in Samara
  • Viktor Ivanovich Tscherepkov, former mayor of Vladivostok
  • Rinat Khamijew, director of the “Zorro” company, from Orenburg .

According to the Central Election Committee, since they failed to collect at least 2 million valid signatures by January 30, 2012, they were excluded from the election.

Grigori Jawlinski

Grigori Jawlinski , the ex-party leader of the liberal Yabloko party , had already announced in April 2010 that Yabloko would take part in the presidential elections with his own candidate. However, he did not give any specific names.

In June 2011, Yabloko party leader Sergei Mitrochin said that his party was “primarily deliberating on the candidacy of Grigori Jawlinski”.

In January 2012, he was denied entry to the presidential election despite submitting the two million signatures required to support him. According to the Russian election management, this happened because of partially invalid support signatures. The double check of the submitted signatures revealed 25.66 percent forgeries, which was significantly more than the permitted five percent of possible statistical errors.

Excluded from the collection of signatures

Eduard Limonow (Sawenko)

The far -right opposition politician Eduard Limonov (Sawenko) announced his candidacy in March 2009. Limonov is a writer and party leader of the National Bolshevik Party of Russia (NBP), which is classified as extremist . Limonov was refused candidacy.

Leonid Ivashov

Leonid Grigoryevich Iwaschow , a former colonel general - among other things deployed in Kosovo in 1999 - announced his candidacy on December 6th. Ivashov is the former chairman of the "League of the Russian People", a monarchist organization (until 2008). However, he was not allowed to participate in the elections. Ivashov was refused candidacy because the list of the 500 signatures required to register with the Central Electoral Authority did not include the place and date of the signatures.

Withdrawn candidacy

On September 2, 2011, the well-known Russian actor and Russian Orthodox priest Ivan Ochlobystin , who has been on leave since February 2010, announced his presidential candidacy . He wanted to convince with a “philosophical-ideological” concept so that Russia could become “a real nation again”. However, he made his candidacy conditional on the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church approving the candidacy. The Holy Synod refused to approve, and Ochlobystin withdrew its announcement.

Election organization

Ballot boxes at a polling station in Severodvinsk

For the first time in Russian history and for the first time ever, the polling stations for the 2012 presidential election were to be video-monitored across the board . The Ministry of Telecommunications announced in February 2012 that all premises had been equipped with webcams and computers. 90,000 polling stations each received two web cameras. The technical difficulties associated with the transmission of the huge amounts of data were to be resolved in advance after numerous tests: video material of 250 years in length had to be loaded and saved in a single day. For most remote areas without internet, special fiber optic cables were to be laid, for the few areas that were even further away satellite channels were planned. One and a half million users should be able to watch live over the Internet at the same time. After the polling stations had closed and the counting began, the live broadcast was to be interrupted while the recording itself continued. This should prevent results from being prematurely made public by third parties.

The measure cost 25 billion rubles (about 620 million euros). Media reported that President Putin initiated the project in response to protests after the December 2011 Duma elections. In the 2011 election, voters recorded alleged violations of voting rights with cell phone cameras and made them public on the Internet.

Voter polls

On February 24, the results of polls by several polling institutes were published. According to the independent Levada Center , around 66 percent of voters said they wanted to vote for Vladimir Putin. The two state polling institutes WZIOM and FOM expected an approval of around 59 percent for the head of government.

Results

The end result was as follows:

space candidate be right Proportion of the
valid votes
1. Wladimir Putin 45.602.075 64.35%
2. Gennady Zyuganov 12,318,353 17.38%
3. Mikhail Prokhorov 5,722,508 8.08%
4th Vladimir Zhirinovsky 4,458,103 6.30%
5. Sergei Mironov 2,763,935 3.90%
Valid votes 70,864,974 100.00%
Invalid votes 836,691 Corresponds to ~ 1.2% of all votes
Total votes (turnout 65.25%) 71.701.665

Vladimir Putin had thus won the election as Russian President in the first round of voting.

Regional differences

There were in some cases considerable differences between the regions in terms of the choice. The Kremlin candidate Vladimir Putin took first place in all regions of Russia. In five regions ( Chechnya , Dagestan , Tuva , Ingushetia and Karachay-Cherkessia ) Vladimir Putin won over 90 percent of the vote. According to official figures, Putin achieved an election result of 99.76 percent in Chechnya, with a voter turnout of 99.61 percent. In three regions, in Mordovia , in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug and in Tatarstan , Putin reached over 80 percent. Furthermore, it came to over 60 percent in 31 regions and over 50 percent in 34 regions. Only in one region, namely in the city of Moscow , did Putin come in below 50 percent. There only 47.2 percent voted for him.

After the elections

After the elections, the government tightened its course against the opposition. Some examples:

  • The blogger Alexei Navalny (one of Putin's best-known critics, he organized the large demonstrations against his third term in office) was officially charged at the end of July 2012 - for allegedly questionable timber deals.
  • The oligarch Alexander Evgenyevich Lebedev announced on August 3, 2012 his withdrawal from Russia. He was exposed to threats and blackmail from the Russian Domestic Intelligence Service (FSB) , which he could no longer withstand.
  • In July 2012, Putin enacted a law requiring NGO employees who receive funding from abroad to identify themselves as foreign agents (similar to the " Foreign Agents Registration Act " in the USA). Those affected fear severe disabilities in their work.
  • Three young women from the punk band Pussy Riot , who during the election campaign issued insults and insulting screams in the central church in Moscow for a punk prayer against Putin and against the close links between the Russian Orthodox Church and the state, had to go to court. On August 17, 2012, the band members were found guilty of "hooliganism out of religious hatred". Judge Marina Syrowa sentenced the accused to two years in a prison camp. The six-month pre-trial detention is taken into account.

See also

Web links

Commons : Russian Presidential Election 2012  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Legal text (Russian)
  2. http://de.ria.ru/politics/20110924/260695552.html RIA Novosti : Putin runs for the 2012 presidential election
  3. Russia: Orthodox Church insists on its rights Vatican Radio on February 25, 2012.
  4. Patriarch has right to election projections - Russian Church Interfax -Religion on February 17, 2012.
  5. Vladimir Putin: "Быть сильными: гарантии национальной безопасности для России" in Rossiyskaya Gazeta on February 20, 2012.
  6. Putin wants to renew the arms industry RIA Novosti on February 22, 2012.
  7. In response to the planned NATO missile defense shield: Putin announces "unprecedented" armament for Russia Wiener Zeitung on February 20, 2012.
  8. Russia's Defense Department estimates “military voters” at ten million RIA Novosti on February 29, 2012.
  9. The worldview of Vladimir Putin RIA Novosti on March 1, 2012.
  10. Vladimir Putin: Russia and the World in Transition German translation in Zeit -fragen from March 26, 2012.
  11. - ( Memento from August 18, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  12. http://www.gazeta.ru/interview/nm/s3459477.shtml
  13. http://www.1tv.ru/sprojects_edition/si5756/fi5278
  14. http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/1765758
  15. Benjamin Bidder: Putin challenger Prokhorov: The billionaire's maneuver. In: Spiegel Online . December 13, 2011, accessed June 9, 2018 .
  16. http://www.1tv.ru/prj/pozner/vypusk/3886
  17. http://ria.ru/politics/20110606/384910423.html
  18. orf.at published on January 24, 2012: Putin opponents excluded from presidential election .
  19. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo52uf-0N7I
  20. http://www.lenta.ru/news/2011/09/05/ivan/
  21. http://www.interfax.ru/politics/txt.asp?id=206641
  22. https://www.fr.de/politik/putins-response-proteste-videokameras-wahllokal-11325570.html
  23. a b Spiegel Online : Presidential election Russia: Putin is clearly ahead in polls , February 24, 2012
  24. www.vybory.izbirkom.ru: Election results for the 2012 presidential election on March 4, 2012
  25. AFP / dpa / dapd / Reuters / mcz: Russia election: In Chechnya, 99.76 percent vote for Putin. In: welt.de . March 5, 2012, accessed October 7, 2018 .
  26. Russia accuses anti-Putin bloggers. In: Spiegel Online from July 31, 2012.
  27. Oligarch announces withdrawal from Russia. In: Spiegel Online from August 3, 2012.
  28. Putin signs controversial agent law. In: Spiegel Online from July 21, 2012.
  29. Pussy Riot original video uncut Pussy Riot original video uncut (no protest, only insults), June 5th, 2012.
  30. In Germany, the criminal provisions applicable to a corresponding offense are § 167 StGB (disruption of religious practice) and § 123 StGB (trespassing) . See also the judgment of the Jena Higher Regional Court on the "Church Troublemaker of Erfurt" from 2006 (OLG Jena –1 Ss 296 / 05–, NJW 2006, 1892, online ). In Switzerland, Art. 261 StGB applies .