United Russia blasts communist election initiative as obsolete

The United Russia party has said that the call by the Russian communists’ leader to form election commissions on a parity basis was a populist statement as such a norm already exists in the current elections law.

The Secretary of the Presidium of the General Council of the United Russia party, Sergey Neverov, said on Wednesday that the sole objective of the communists’ rhetoric was “to undermine the people’s trust in the very possibility to hold honest and clean elections, and thus the trust in the elected authorities.”Neverov stressed that the statements made by the head of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Gennady Zyuganov, at the Wednesday press conference in Moscow were exploiting the current political situation and mirrored the statements that the Communists made after any elections in modern Russian history.Besides, the United Russia official ridiculed Zyuganov’s promise to submit a bill that would guarantee that elections commissions are formed by all parties on a parity basis. Neverov said that the current law already contained such guarantee as elections commissions are formed on the basis of the written suggestions of the political parties that are allowed to take part in the poll. “Despite of the fact that Gennady Andreevich {Zyuganov] has been engaged in parliamentary activities for almost 20 years, he apparently is not trained in the elementary basics of the elections law,” Neverov said. Also on Wednesday the Central Elections Commission rejected the criticism voiced by the communists, in particular the calls to hold new parliamentary elections because of the violations that were registered at the December poll.“The elections law provides that there must be corresponding reasons to hold the early elections. At present, there are no such reasons,” commission member Maya Grishina said.