Election fraud puts governor in weakened position
The prosecutor’s office in Arkhangelsk now admits that election results in the recent local city mayor’s elections resemble fraud. The elections have already significantly weakened the position of regional Governor Ilya Mikhalchuk.
A regional analyst now writes for Rusnord.ru that the political crisis in the strategically important northern region is getting “chronical“. According to Yuri Shabaev, an historian from the ethnography department of the Komi Science Centre, the elections are not only a political defeat for the new governor. They also put a questionmark on the general political management methods applied by the new regional leader.
Failed democracy
The city mayor’s elections in Arkhangelsk were held on May 25, only two weeks after the inauguration of new Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. The political establishment in Arkhangelsk Oblast might however hardly have listened to the new president’s repeated stress on the rule of law. The regional prosecutor now confirms that the election results suspiciuosly looks like fraud, Rusnord.ru reports.
The apparent falsification of the Arkhangelsk city election brings the regional population’s trust in the political establishment to a new low. From before, the trust in the politicians was unprecedently low. Only 17,9 percent of the electorate participated in the local elections, which were held after the arrest and dismissal of former popular city mayor Aleksandr Donskoy.
Pavlenko against Bazanova
Governor Mikhalkov gave his full support to acting city Mayor Viktor Pavlenko in the May 25 elections. Despite heavy administrative backing from the regional political establishment, Mr. Pavelenko still failed to secure a safe win. As a matter of fact, the local city election commission on May 26 declared opponent Larisa Bazanova the winner with a margin of only 70 votes.
A suspicious recount of the votes altered the results in Mr. Pavlenko’s favour, however. Ms. Bazanova and her supporters immediately cried fault, and subsequently initiated a court case. The regional prosecutor has not accepted the case and will conduct an investigation. As BarentsObserver previously has reported, it is already clear that a significant number of unidentified ballot papers somehow made it into the local election commission’s office and mixed with the original papers.
Who is behind?
A major questionmark is now put not only on the liability of city Mayor Pavlenko, but also on Governor Mikhalchuk. After all, he put major prestigue in the win of Mr. Pavlenko, and even persuaded several of the other top candidates to withdraw from the campaign in return for high posts in his administration.
In any case, the city mayor’s election in Arkhangelsk can only be seen as a very bad start for Governor Mikhalchuk, who was appointed regional leader in mid-April this year. The man who was sent to Arkhangelsk to overcome the political crisis in the region, himself started his period with a grand political scandal.
