Next Month's Russian Presidential Election will be Followed by Four Candidates, Incumbent Putin will Face His Rival 20 Years Ago

JAKARTA - Incumbent Vladimir Putin will face his rival 20 years ago, in addition to two other candidates, in the 2024 Russian Presidential Election which will be held next month.

Quoted from TASS, February 12, the Central Election Commission (CEC) of the Russian Federation officially closed the registration of presidential candidates, resulting in four figures who will compete, the first time since 2008.

Vladimir Putin (71) from the independent line, Nikolay Kharitonov (75) from the Communist Party (CPRF), Leonid Slutsky (56) from the LDPR Party and Vladislav Davankov (39) from the New People Party will compete in the elections held on March 15-17.

The list does not include Russian anti-war candidate Boris Nadezhdin after the CEC banned him on Thursday last week from running, citing a lack of supporting signatures collected for his candidacy, reported Reuters.

In contrast to Vladimir Putin's three potential opponents who support special military operations in Ukraine, Nadezhdin criticized the war in Ukraine as a fatal mistake, planning to challenge the CEC's decision to the Russian Supreme Court.

Going back, the process of registering candidates from political parties took place from December 8 to January 1, with the last registration of independent candidates on December 27.

On December 28, Chair of Russia's Central Election Commission Ella Pamfilova said a total of 33 people, including nine party candidates and 24 independent candidates, were planning to run for president of Russia next year. Only 15 of them finally submitted the required documents to be registered as candidates.

When the deadline for submitting documents expired on January 1, only 11 candidates remained in the nomination: three independent candidates (Putin, Rada Russkikh bloggers and Anatoly Batashev), as well as eight candidates from political parties: Leonid Slutsky (LDPR), Nikolai Kharitonov (CPRF), Vladislav Davankov (New People), Sergey Baburin (Russian People's Union), Andrey Bogdanov (Russian Party of Freedom and Justice), Boris Nadezhdin (Civic Initiative), Sergey Malinkovich (Russian Communists) and Irina Sviridova (Russian Democratic Party).

Slutsky and Davankov became the first registered candidates on January 9. Kharitonov joined them on the same date. All of them are members of parties represented in the lower house of the Russian parliament, CPRF, LDPR and New People, so there is no need to collect signatures.

Other candidates began collecting signatures and application documents after January 22, with a deadline of January 31. At that time, candidates running as independents were expected to show 300,000 signatures in their support, while candidates from outside parliamentary parties needed 100,000 signatures.

Late last month, CEC Secretary Natalya Budarina explained that, as required by law, 60,000 signatures of support had been randomly selected for verification from 315,000 signatures collected for Putin.

"The verification results show that 91 signatures out of 60,000 people were declared invalid due to incorrect voter information. The 91 invalid signatures constitute 0.15 percent of those verified," he explained.

Budarina further detailed that there were no fake signatures. The number of valid voter signatures reached 314,909.

Before the January 31 deadline expired, three candidates – Baburin, Sviridova and Bogdanov – withdrew from the race.

On February 8, the CEC rejected the registration of presidential candidates Sergey Malinkovich of the Russian Communist Party and Boris Nadezhdin of the Civic Initiative Party, citing the high percentage of invalid signatures submitted in their support.

This percentage is above the permitted limit of 5 percent (14.9 percent for Malinkovich and 15.2 percent for Nadezhdin). Meanwhile, bloggers Rada Russkikh and Anatoly Batashev failed to take part in the nomination, due to not having the required number of signatures and not having certain documents.

It is known that this is the eighth presidential election in Russia. If there is no majority winner in the March voting, the second round will be held on April 7, while the winner will be inaugurated on May 7.

For Kharitonov, this is the second time he has faced Putin in the presidential election arena. This senior politician was a participant in the Russian Presidential Election in 2004. He finished second with 13.80 percent of the vote, behind Putin with 71.91 percent. Apart from these two, the 2004 elections were participated by Sergey Glazyev (independent, 4.14 percent), Irina Khakamada (independent, 3.88 percent), Oleg Malyshkin (LDPR, 2.04 percent) and Sergey Mironov (RPL, 0.76 percent), quoted from CEC.