Azerbaijan, Baku /corr. Trend A.Gasimova / The parliamentary elections in Russia have already been decided beforehand, said the Director of the Moscow Department of Heritage Foundation, Yevgeni Volk. The parliamentary elections in Russia are to take on 2 December 2007. It is the first election that the barrier for the parties has been increased from 5% to 7%. In addition, the possibility to vote against all has been removed, majority system has been canceled, the members of one party were banned to be described in the list of another party. Moreover, one-mandate districts were annulled.
"The elections have been decided beforehand because the influential resources, including image of the current President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, have been directed towards the elections," Volk said by telephone from Moscow on 23 November.
According to Volk, the situation becomes concentrated when all forces mobilize to ensure the victory of the pro-governmental Unified Russia Party and many members of other parties, including Fair Russia Party, join Unified Russia. "As regards to the Communist Party of Russia, they have stable electorate, nearly 10% of the voters," the expert said.
"In any cases, majority of the votes which went to the leader of the Communist Party, Gennady Zyuganov will go to Unified Russia this time," Volk said. According to him, most of the communists support Putin. According to the information by the Federal Registration Service of Russia, nearly 15 political parties meet the requirements of the item 2 of article 36 of the Federal Law on Political Parties.