Voters and opposition leaders rallied on the streets of Moscow, Russia, on the 14th of July against the exclusion of opposition candidates from running for City Parliament. The electoral commission reportedly announced that most of the opposition candidates failed to secure the required number of signatures to run in the elections.

Electoral laws in Russia require that potential candidates collect signatures of city residents to endorse their candidacy. For the 45-seat Moscow city parliament, a candidate has to have 5000 signatures, of which not more than 10% should be invalid.

A String of Coincidences?

The situation is all too familiar to the opposition in Russia. Barring opposition candidates from running is seen as a strategy to tip the election in favour of the incumbent and their allies. In 2018, Alexei Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner opposed to President Vladimir Putin’s rule, was banned from running in the presidential elections that year. Boris Nemtsov, the former deputy prime minister and once prominent opposition figure, was assassinated in 2015. The current mayor of Moscow, Sergey Sobyanin, an ally of President Putin, also defeated Navalny in the 2013 Moscow mayoral election, although Navalny alleges the election was rigged.

Opposition Candidates

Opposition candidates present at the rally included Ilya Yashin, Lyubov Sobol and Dmitry Gudkov. The Independent notes that Ilya Yashin is a close associate of the murdered opposition leader, Boris Nemtsov. Lyubov Sobol, a lawyer, is a close associate of Alexei Navalny, a prominent opposition figure against the incumbent President Putin. Dmitry Gudkov, a former State Duma deputy voted against Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, a move President Putin could not have been pleased with.

The Fight Continues

Despite several arrests made on the July 14th rally, the opposition leaders say they will not relent. Ilya Yashi made a call for another rally on Saturday 20th July.