Author Caroline Walton laments the lack of female candidates in the upcoming Russian presidential elections.
Women in Russian politics are even rarer than on the Liberal Democrat benches. Notable exceptions were Nadezhda Krupskaya (Lenin’s wife), Ekaterina Furtseva (hard-drinking Khrushchevite Politburo member) and Galina Starovoitova (anti-corruption democrat assassinated in St Petersburg in 1998).
In the forthcoming elections (March 4th) we see the familiar array of Vladimir Putin, nationalists, communists, oligarchs, democrats – all of them men. But there might have been an exception - Svetlana Peunova of the Volya party was a presidential hopeful (Volya means ‘will’ and also ‘freedom’).
However, Peunova was not allowed to register her party in the elections. It gained 243,000 signatures of support instead of the 2 million required. Last week Peunova petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn the Central Election Commission’s decision not to register her as a presidential candidate. She argued that it is impossible for independents to collect the requisite two million signatures in the 20 days allowed.
Another candidate, Grigory Yavlinsky, succeeded in presenting two million signatures but was disallowed from standing as 70 sheets of signatures were declared to be photocopies. Like Peunova, he is challenging the CEC’s ruling.
I remember how, back in the 1990s, candidates rose to the task of collecting signatures. Friends who worked in a bank were told that if they valued their jobs they would give their signatures to the candidate of their boss’s choice.
I await the CEC’s decision with interest.
More on the elections to follow…
Caroline Walton is the author of The Beseiged: A Story of Survival, published by BiteBack Publishing, a beautifully observed account of the Siege of Leningrad.