Election observers and legitimacy
Would you encourage international elections observers for U.S. elections?European election observer attacks Russian poll rules
"A senior member of Europe's main human rights body launched an outspoken attack on Russia's elections yesterday...
"'We were repeatedly informed... that the ruling party almost fully controls the airwaves...' he told a news conference in Moscow.
"[He] was perturbed that the Kremlin had changed the threshold for entering parliament from 5% to 7%... [and] criticised the 'rather complicated' registration process.
"Only 11 out of 85 parties that wanted to stand in the December 2 poll had been allowed to do so... with almost all of Russia's democratic opposition kept off the ballot paper.
"The Kremlin has already indicated that international observers are not welcome at next month's poll...
"But Russia's election chief, Vladimir Churov, shrugged off western concerns. 'Tell me where in any international or internal [Russian] document it is written that the legitimacy of the elections depends on the number of international observers,' he said on Tuesday."
Labels: elections, politics, Russia
posted by Ken Wedding @ 8:29 AM
1 Comments:
The CBC reports
Russia denies visas to election observers, monitor group says
"Moscow has refused to issue visas to election observers for its upcoming parliamentary vote, an international security organization said Friday...
"Russians go to the polls on Dec. 2 to elect the country's parliament, or Duma. The country has already been criticized over the vote because the government said it would only allow 70 observers this year, compared with 400 in 2003...
"A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Peskov, told the Associated Press that member countries are allowed to specify how many observers can be deployed and 'the Russian Federation is totally complying with its obligations, as part of the OSCE [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe].'..."
Post a Comment
<< Home