Boris Nadezhdin, 60, sparked queues all over Russia in January when supporters submitted signatures so he could be registered as an official candidate in the presidential election. On Wednesday, he handed in more than the 100,000 required signatures to the Central Election Commission, which is expected to rule next week on whether he will be allowed to stand.
Now his hopes of challenging the current president could be dashed by claims that the signatures are from deceased individuals.
So you’re saying they’re affraid someone might release the real election results?
I’m saying they have to maintain a veneer of authenticity, even if it’s an open lie. At some point, when everything is apparent to everyone, people will just snap. That’s literally what happened when the USSR was founded.
Putin may wax poetic about the USSR, but he knows what happens when those balaclavas come back on and when active terrorist insurrection groups start forming.
So he needs to pretend that votes count, because no matter how well he seized up the police, the military, even the criminal underworld, if even just ⅓ of those groups start conspiring, it’s likely to have a snowball effect.