Experts claim no background for sharp struggle during elections in NCFD

On July 19, the Carnegie Moscow Centre hosted the presentation of the report on the topic "2016 elections: routine or change?" The report was prepared by Andrei Kolesnikov, the head of the programme "Russian Domestic Policy and Political Institutions" of the Moscow Carnegie Centre, a member of the Board of the Yegor Gaidar Foundation, and Boris Makarenko, Chairman of the Board of the Centre for Political Technologies, Professor of the National Research Studies University "Higher School of Economics".

In his speech, Andrei Kolesnikov has noted that the 2016 elections put forward the task of preserving the legitimacy of the current authorities and the challenge to build the election campaign in such a way as to avoid dissent.

Despite the signals on intention to conduct the upcoming election campaign openly, people should not expect serious competition and dramatic changes. This was told to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent by the co-author of the report.

According to Boris Makarenko, the most important task of the elections is to preserve the legitimacy of the current authorities, and the outcome of the elections is predetermined.

"While in the classical democracies, the elections is a game played under certain rules with an unknown outcome, then in Russia, the situation is the opposite: the rules change, and the outcomes are almost the same," Boris Makarenko has said at the presentation of the report held in Moscow on July 19.

In the autumn of 2016, the regions of the North-Caucasian Federal District (NCFD) will face no bright pre-election campaign because of certain prevailing specifics of the political activity of local residents. This opinion was voiced by Vadim Mukhanov, Senior Researcher of the Centre of the Caucasus Problems and Regional Security at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (known as MGIMO).

"Firstly, these regions have never been characterized by high political activity, and the actual turnout at the various elections to the parliaments and at the presidential election has always been very low. Secondly, the residents of the NCFD are not much interested in watching the political battles and are not much politically educated," Vadim Mukhanov told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

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