Central Election Commission chief Vladimir Churov, right
Photo: Kirill Tulin
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State Duma Elections Not to Be Ignored
The international observers are finally clear about their presence at elections to the lower house of Russia’s parliament, the State Duma. They all will come here but for the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. Regardless, the opposition counts only on its own observers, speculating that the presence of foreign experts will hardly add honesty and freedom to elections.
The experts from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), the Parliamentary Assembly of OSCE (PA OSCE) and the Inter-Parliament Assembly of CIS will monitor the State Duma elections in Russia, Central Election Commission chief Vladimir Churov announced yesterday. But experts of the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights turned down the invitation, and their quota has been distributed amid other international observers.
The refusal of OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights was “a strange and erroneous position, which appears elaborated in advance,” Russia’s First Vice Premier Dmitry Medvedev commented on the same day. “I wouldn’t like to suspect anybody of anything, but our European colleagues were always silent, though we had explained everything to them, where and how to get visas, then they went on a trip to the United States and proclaimed the exact standing,” Medvedev specified.
The international observers are expected to arrive in Russia November 28. The observers from CIS will gather November 30, said Kazakhstan’s envoy Bakytzhan Zhumagulov, who is in Moscow already.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Nov. 21, 2007
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