Interfax: Navalny has no chance to win and he doesn’t plan to – analysts

(Interfax – MOSCOW, July 23, 2013) Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s participation in the Moscow mayoral elections will enhance their legitimacy, although no one thinks Navalny will win, political analysts said.

“Navalny will definitely lose in an honest game,” Konstantin Kostin, chairman of the Civil Society Development Foundation, said at a press conference in Moscow on Tuesday.

The front-runner, Sergei Sobyanin, will do all he can to make the election procedures transparent,” he said.

“Navalny is a media figure of course, but he has no credibility as a politician,” Kostin said.

Navalny lacks a substantive election program, he said. “Students and protestors are with him already. If he wants to create conditions for attracting other groups, which would seriously affect his ratings, a more substantive program is needed,” he said.

Alexei Mukhin, general director of the Political Information Center, said at a press conference that “Navalny has managed to form a support group, but he has no electorate of his own so far. His goal is to achieve political institutionalization, not to win,” he said. “It is one thing to participate in elections as a blogger and another as a politician,” he said.

In the opinion of political analyst Alexei Zudin, Muscovites do not see Navalny as a real politician or as a manager with the needed skills to run such a large city like Moscow. “It looks like many voters do not consider him a real candidate with a substantive program,” he said.

“Candidates like Navalny can give additional legitimacy, or simply legitimacy to the elections,” Zudin said.

It is important how Navalny will handle his defeat, he said. “He cannot win in these elections under any circumstances, like any other second- or third-level candidate,” Zudin said.

Navalny’s participation is rooted in the protest movement born in December 2011. “The movement is on decline and has no source of inspiration,” he said.

“The protest movement emerged due to opposition to dishonest elections. I think Navalny is participating in the elections in order to proclaim the outcome was rigged and thus breathe new life into the protest movement,” he said.

The Moscow mayoral elections are due to be held on September 8.