The Russian general elections, held from September 17-19, experienced no violations and showed Moscow's efforts to improve voting transparency, Thierry Mariani, an independent observer and member of the European Parliament from France, told Sputnik on Monday
ST.PETERSBURG (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th September, 2021) The Russian general elections, held from September 17-19, experienced no violations and showed Moscow's efforts to improve voting transparency, Thierry Mariani, an independent observer and member of the European Parliament from France, told Sputnik on Monday.
"I wasn't present for the campaign and cannot comment on that part of the elections, I was observing only the voting part. With regard to the voting operation, for me everything was completely correct," Mariani said, adding that camera surveillance at each polling station helped with transparency.
He noted that he visited about 20 polling stations and none of the observers there pointed out any violations during the three days of the election.
Mariani, who has been observing all legislative elections in Russia since 2007 as part of an official mission of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), further expressed disappointment that the OSCE refused to send its monitoring mission to Russia after receiving a request from Moscow to limit the number of people to 50 due to COVID-19. He stressed that a year ago, when the United States asked to have fewer observers for the same reason, the OSCE accepted those terms, but reacted completely differently in Russia's case.
"The organization simply canceled the observation mission because of Russia's request to send fewer observers. It is very sly because this way they can simply say that everything is wrong in advance," the French observer said.
As an example of such tactics, he adduced the European Parliament resolution calling to withhold recognition of election results if democratic principles are violated, which was voted on September 16, before the start of the elections. As such, according to the French observer, the Russian government's efforts to hold fair elections will "never be enough for the West because it is Russia."
Russian legislative elections took place across the country from September 17-19, both at polling stations and online.
