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Surprise win in Arkhangelsk

Arkhangelsk city hall (Barentsphoto.com)

Amid heavy support from the governor, acting city mayor Viktor Pavlenko failed to win this weekend’s mayor’s election in Arkhangelsk. Larisa Bazanova, a previously unknown businesswoman from Moscow, will be the new mayor of Arkhangelsk, the local election commission confirms.

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Ms Bazanova won the elections with the smallest possible margin, only 0,1 percent separated the two candidates. 37,55 percent of the voters favoured Bazanova, while 37,41 percent preferred acting city mayor Pavlenko.

Voter turnout was as low as 18,23 percent, Regnum reports.

Election fraud?

The election results are confirmed by head of the regional election commission, Vladimir Churkin. At the same time however, he underlines that it is too early to speak about the final victory of Larisa Bazanova, as candidate Pavlenko has complained about election violations.

-We will be verifying the documents from the territorial election commissions, possibly ballots also, Mr. Churkin confirmed to Regnum.

Dirty elections

-These have been the dirtiest elections in the history of Arkhangelsk Oblast. The low turnout is due to dirty technologies used during the election campaign and also due to an unsatisfactory work of the election commission which failed to provide adequate information about the candidates, - said Aleksandr Novikov, a deputy from the Arkhangelsk Oblast regional parliament, First Secretary of the regional committee of the Russian Communist Party.

Aleksandr Novikov stressed that people were willing to know about the candidates’s incomes and property. Political parties were also aloof in the whole campaign.

He believes that Bazanova won the elections thanks to protest votes.

-Bazanova profited enormously from the support she got from ex Mayor Donskoy. People were also appalled by the “cleansing” of the candidates’s list, namely that Sergey Moiseev and Ernest Belokorovin had to withdraw their candidacies,” said Mr. Novikov.

In the course of the election campaign, as many as six of the candidates withdrew their candidacies, among them members of the regional parliament, Sergey Moiseev and Ernest Belokorovin. Critics believe that Governor Ilya Mikhalchuk, who has given his support to Mr. Pavlenko, might have been the one making them withdraw their candidacies. 

 

BarentsObserver Arkhangelsk

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