In Dagestan, administrative resource affects results of primaries, experts assert

In Dagestan, the primaries of the "Edinaya Rossiya" (United Russia) Party did not show the level of support for candidates among voters because of the use of administrative resource. This opinion was expressed by participants of the project "Games of Journalists" in Dagestan on May 21. According to them, the "Edinaya Rossiya" Party has always used the administrative resource in the course of intra-party voting for the selection of candidates, as well as for the increase in the turnout during the voting.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on May 22, regions of Russia, including in the North-Caucasian Federal District (NCFD) and the Southern Federal District (SFD), hold the primaries of the "Edinaya Rossiya" Party to determine candidates to the State Duma. In Dagestan, 43 candidates were registered for the primaries, including six out of nine current State Duma deputies from Dagestan.

The current primaries proved that neither the federal nor the Dagestani centres are willing to rely completely on the opinion of voters, and once again, the administrative resource was used in some places, clearly, and in others by default. This was told to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent by Mairbek Agaev, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Chernovik" (Draft).

Despite the results of intra-party voting, the candidates will be selected among members of the Ramazan Abdulatipov's team, believes Ruslan Kurbanov, Senior Researcher of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS).

"In any case, passing scores will be given to those people whom Ramazan Abdulatipov and his team will want to see in the list of the 'Edinaya Rossiya' Party at the major elections," Ruslan Kurbanov told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

"The candidates were to demonstrate their support by the people. However, because of the information concerning the facts that public employees were brought to pooling stations and that the administrative resource was used, we get no clear understanding of how many percents of support from the people were gained by the candidates. And I believe that all those figures will 'drawn'," said Ruslan Kurbanov.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.