Russian anti-war presidential candidate Boris Nadezhdin says he has been banned from running against Vladimir Putin in the carefully managed presidential elections in March.
Earlier on Thursday the central election commission (CEC) said it had found “irregularities” in over 9,000 of more than 100,000 signatures of support submitted by Nadezhdin.
That figure was three times higher than the allowable 5% error rate and provides grounds for the commission to disqualify Nadezhdin.
CEC’s deputy chair Nikolai Bulaev said last week it had found 11 “dead souls” among the more than 100,000 signatures of support submitted by Nadezhdin.
Considering Putin signed legislation a handful of years ago making him dictator for life, why are they even bothering to hold pretend elections?
Because even dictators don’t have power from “god”. Power comes from a group of people and autocracies differ from democracies by the size of this power-legitimizing group (I strongly recommend book “Dictator’s Handbook”).
In Russia this group consists of oligarchs and army generals. And those people need “normal” people to not be against government to work without complaining and revolting. One easy way to increase that satisfaction is by running huge propaganda camping and then organising theatre of choice.
Then high election result, makes people not revolt (cause they “chose” the ruler), reassures oligarchs and generals that it’s a good thing that you’re the leader and finally you can tell the international community that you’re a democracy.
So there’s a few reasons for elections in autocracies
Because narcissists are super insecure, and dictatorships are a game of stupid musical chairs featuring the idiots at the top in power doing all sorts of shit that does not make sense to appease the big idiot at the top.
Remember how Trump had this need for people to grovel and beg before him? It’s that same thing but institutionalized.