Russia: More Parties Banned From Elections in Russia | RIA Novosti

More parties have been banned from regional elections in Russia this year than in 2012, despite the Kremlin’s attempted liberalization of political legislation, a new study said Wednesday. In total, 9.2 percent of the candidate lists submitted by parties for the September 8 elections have been banned, compared with 2.4 percent last year, according to a report by the Civil Initiatives Committee think tank, founded by longtime Kremlin insider-turned-critic Alexei Kudrin, a former finance minister.
At least some of the bans were politically motivated, especially those targeting the liberal “Republican Party of Russia – Parnas,” which has allied with leading anti-Kremlin basher Alexei Navalny for the upcoming mayoral election in Moscow, and billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov’s Civil Platform, the report said.
RPR-Parnas was kicked off the ballot in the Siberian republic of Khakassia on a technicality. Civil Platform was banned from running for the Yaroslavl city legislature soon after the party-affiliated mayor, Sergei Urlashov, an outspoken critic of the ruling United Russia, was arrested in a bribery case he called fabricated for political reasons.
Full Article: More Parties Banned From Elections in Russia – Study | Politics | RIA Novosti.