Board of the "Memorial" Society has explained to its regional branches its attitude to State Duma elections

Today, the Board of the Russian Society "Memorial" has sent a letter to its regional branches, in which the Society explains its attitude to the RF State Duma elections to take place on December 2, 2007.

The letter runs that, in the opinion of the "Memorial" Society, the conditions under which the elections will take place fail to ensure any really fair political competition and free exhibition of the will of people.

Among the reasons, the members of the Board of the "Memorial" enumerate a number of legal acts, in particular, the Law on Political Parties, which hampers creation of new political associations and preservation of the former ones, with account of the extremely tough requirements to the total number of regional branches of each party.

Also, the ban to vote "against all" is turning away from the elections many political associations, which are expressing in aggregate the views of a significant part of the population.

The second reason the "Memorial" has named was the actual control of the executive power over electronic and printed mass media, "where the access of oppositional political forces has been closed for several years already."

The "Memorial" names the third reason to be "an unprecedented broad use in the present electoral campaign of the 'administrative resource', which frequently takes the forms of direct pressure, blackmail and threats."

"The main thing is that now the access of local independent observers has been excluded by the law. Also, the number of foreign observers has been considerably reduced," the letter runs.