Russian Communist Party Protests Election Fraud in Moscow Demonstration

[Asia Economy Reporter Yujin Cho] The Communist Party, the main opposition party in the Russian parliament, held a protest rally in downtown Moscow last week, rejecting the results of the recent general election for the State Duma deputies.

According to Interfax News Agency on the 25th (local time), the Moscow Committee of the Communist Party held a rally in Pushkin Square in downtown Moscow in the afternoon to protest the general election results.

According to estimates by the Moscow police, about 400 supporters, including Communist Party members, participated in the rally. The Communist Party had previously applied to the city authorities to hold a rally with 5,000 participants, but it was denied due to the risk of COVID-19 spread. In response, the Communist Party changed the format of the rally to a dialogue between party members and deputies and proceeded with the protest.

Police deployed around Pushkin Square played music through loudspeakers to drown out the speeches of the Communist Party members participating in the protest.

The Communist Party claimed that significant manipulation occurred during the vote counting process of the general election held from the 17th to the 19th and stated that they could not recognize the Moscow election results.

The recent general election, conducted under a mixed system of party-list proportional representation and single-member districts, resulted in the ruling party "United Russia," the political support base of President Vladimir Putin, winning 324 out of 450 seats in the State Duma.

They secured 126 seats through the party-list vote and 198 seats through the single-member district vote, far exceeding the two-thirds majority (300 seats) required to independently amend the constitution.

The Communist Party, which came in second, won 57 seats, including 48 from the party-list vote and 9 from the single-member districts. The social-democratic party "A Just Russia ? For Truth" secured 27 seats, and the far-right nationalist Liberal Democratic Party took 21 seats, ranking third and fourth respectively.