Alexei Navalny files mass complaints over Moscow poll

Incumbent mayor Sergei Sobyanin, who barely avoided a run-off in Sunday’s closer-than-expected Moscow mayoral polls, will be sworn in during a ceremony attended by hundreds of guests led by Putin on Thursday evening, a Kremlin spokesman said. 

The ceremonial swearing-in at one of the capital’s landmark parks will take place after the Moscow election commission refused to conduct a partial vote recount demanded by Navalny, Sobyanin’s main rival in the election. 

Navalny said his team had put together documented evidence that the vote was partially rigged in favour of Sobyanin, who was appointed Moscow mayor in 2010 but had called the elections before his term was due to end. 

According to official results, Sobyanin received 51.3 per cent of the vote but Navalny’s team insists that the inauguration should be cancelled because, according to its data, the mayor had polled around 49 per cent. 

Earlier on Thursday, Navalny and his aides had brought some 20 boxes stuffed with what they say is documentary evidence of vote violations to the Moscow city court. ‘We believe that the election on the whole should be cancelled because administrative resources have been used,’ Navalny told reporters, referring to government interference in the poll. 

Similar complaints would be filed with district courts, Navalny’s team said. 

Navalny, who polled a stronger-than-projected 27.2 per cent of the vote, insists that election officials helped the Kremlin ally avoid a second round run-off by allowing irregularities during at-home voting and at polling stations without observers.