photos of Before and After working for Putin

before one works for Putin in government one looks this way:

after one works for Putin in government one looks like this:

8-6/7-19  Photos: Alexander Zemlianichenko, AP

https://www.nhregister.com/news/world/article/Rejected-Moscow-candidates-likely-to-lose-another-14284601.php#next  

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JULY 25, MIDDAY

  A Moscow City Election Commission working group rejected Lyubov Sobol’s appeal of a local commission’s decision not to register her as a candidate for the Moscow City Duma elections in September.  Sobol, an attorney for Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, attended the working group’s hearing. She said her arguments were not considered in the commission’s decision.

A LITTLE LATER

  Sobol announced that she would continue holding the hunger strike she began on July 13 inside the Moscow City Election Commission building.  She vowed to stop only if she was granted a meeting with Russia’s Central Election Commission Chair, Ella Pamfilova, and subsequently registered as a Moscow City Duma candidate.

JULY 26, MORNING

  Moscow City Election Commission representatives announced that they would ask the Investigative Committee to examine whether Sobol’s actions might constitute a felony under Russia’s law against interfering with election procedures. A member of the Election Commission also explained that the couch bearing Sobol was carried out of the building not because Sobol was on it but for other reasons entirely:  Dmitry Reut told RIA Novosti, “Our guards didn’t take out Sobol, they took out the couch to get rid of parasites — bedbugs and that kind of thing.  (Lenin humor.)  They didn’t touch her directly.  She was sitting on the couch, and they took out the couch.”

JULY 26, LATE MORNING

  Sobol arrived at the central branch of Moscow’s Investigative Committee for questioning.  She refused to respond to investigators, citing her right to remain silent under Article 51 of the Russian Constitution.  She also refused to sign a nondisclosure agreement.   https://meduza.io/en/feature/2019/07/26/no-food-and-literal-couch-surfing

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On 25 July 2019, the Moscow police searched homes of independent candidates and summoned many to interrogations, some of the participants of one-person pickets were detained. The authorities opened several criminal cases based on calls for a protest in front of the Mayor’s Office in Moscow on 27 July 2019 and an alleged disturbance of work of the Moscow City Election Commission.

Unfortunately, the situation in Moscow is not a unique case of violations against independent candidates.  In St. Petersburg, where self-government elections are scheduled for the same date, 8 September, queues in election commissions were observed as well, while the registration of independent candidates was refused under dubious conditions.  Only after a series of protests and a personal concern expressed by Ella Pamfilova, Head of the Central Election Commission, a part of registration refusals was cancelled[3].  Violations of electoral rights of the citizens have been also observed during the registration of candidates ahead of the election to the Irkutsk City Duma[4].

It is important that the process of the verification of signatures and the access to the elections takes place in a very open manner and provides for equal admission conditions for all candidates.  However, the authorities, recognising a part of the collected signatures as invalid and refusing some candidates to register, do not take into account the arguments of the candidates and their voters about the authenticity of the collected signatures, do not enter into dialogue and insist on applying unclear and closed procedures.  In particular, candidates and their representatives are not allowed to attend sessions of district election commissions checking voters’ lists submitted by candidates, while verification of signatures is carried out in a secret mode and accompanied by multiple violations.

According to the Golos Movement, the system of registering candidates based on collecting signatures of voters contradicts in its current form the basic principles of free elections and makes it possible to radically distort the will of voters by preventing specific candidates from participating in the elections.    https://eu-russia-csf.org/appeal-to-the-council-of-europe-devoted-to-the-violations-of-electoral-rights-of-russian-citizens-at-the-stage-of-candidates-registration-for-8-september-2019-elections/

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