ELECTION OFFICIAL, COMMUNISTS SWAP ACCUSATIONS OVER VOTE-RIGGING…

The chairman of Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC), Nikolai Ryabov, has accused the Communist party of trying to brainwash the public into believing that their candidate has the support of the majority of the population; if they lose next month’s presidential elections, Ryabov said, the Communists will blame the CEC for having falsified the results. (RTR, May 23) Ryabov was responding to assertions by Communist Duma deputy Viktor Ilyukhin that, "The president will be named, not elected. Boris Yeltsin will be declared president even though Gennady Zyuganov will win." (Interfax, May 22)

Earlier in the week, Communist election organizer Valentin Kuptsov called Ryabov "Yeltsin’s man" and said he could not be trusted not to falsify the count. "We consider the possibility of vote fraud a real one and are preparing for mass monitoring of the voting," Kuptsov said, and added that the Communists and their nationalist allies will send 200,000 observers to the 97,000 electoral districts. He claimed that in last year’s parliamentary elections, the number of voters "was artificially increased by 2.7 million, which kept organizations like the Congress of Russian Communities and Svyatoslav Fyodorov’s Party of Socialist Self-Management below the five percent barrier [required to win representation in the Duma]." (Interfax, May 21)

…And Biased Opinion Polls.