Four candidates from oppositioner Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation have withdrawn from the Barvikha municipal elections, Navalny wrote on his blog Tuesday.
Navalny said his associates had decided not to participate in elections as a protest against fraud in early rounds of voting.
“What's the point of participating if election day has not yet come and 30 percent of votes have been falsified?” Navalny wrote.
He called for the Barvikha elections to be cancelled and for its organizers to be prosecuted. He also wrote that the head of the Russian Central Election Commission Ella Pamfilova should resign, if the results of the elections are deemed legitimate.
Ivan Zhdanov, a lawyer at the Anti-Corruption Fund, is also a candidate but will not be withdrawing from elections. He wrote on his Facebook page that he shares the position of his friends from the fund but has “decided that he will go till the end.”
The opposition activists claim that a large number of young people from outside Barvikha were brought to the town in order to vote in the early rounds of the elections.
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