Golos, Russia's leading independent electoral watchdog, may become homeless one month before the presidential elections, the group’s head said on Tuesday.
The watchdog, which was harassed by officials ahead of last month’s State Duma elections, is already facing a pressure campaign nationwide, and may now have its operations further crippled by relocation, Lilia Shibanova told RIA Novosti.
“Our office troubles began right after the December elections” when the landlord raised the monthly lease by some 100,000 rubles ($3,200), Shibanova said. Golos is leasing space at the office of the Literaturnaya Gazeta arts and culture weekly in downtown Moscow.
Last week, the landlord officially requested Golos to move out by February 1, even though terms of the lease do not allow it to evict the tenant on such short notice, she said.
On Tuesday, Golos received a new letter from the landlord, saying that it may stay, but would have to deal with power shortages due to construction planned for the weeks leading up to the March 4 presidential vote, Shibanova said.
“There’s no point in staying now,” Shibanova said.
The watchdog is still looking for a new office, but it has become a hassle given that Golos has six events planned for this week alone, she said. Among other things, the watchdog is launching a new online map for grassroots activists to report election violations, similar to the one that gathered more than 7,800 reports during the parliamentary elections.
Shibanova did not specify what prompted the office trouble, but said “serious pressure [on us] is going on in the regions.” In one example, an election official in the Tomsk region in western Siberia illegally banned all Golos observers from attending the polling stations on election day, she said.
Literaturnaya Gazeta did not comment on Shibanova's statement on Tuesday. A spokeswoman said by telephone the only person authorized to speak on lease matters was the editor-in-chief, Yury Polyakov, who was out of office and could not be reached.
Several Kremlin-linked media outlets, including NTV television channel and governmental newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta, accused Golos ahead of the Duma vote of being a subversive agent of Western powers.
The agency accepts Western grants, but does so openly. Shibanova also had her laptop confiscated in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, and the Central Election Commission fined the watchdog 30,000 rubles for gathering information on violations five days ahead of the parliamentary elections, though it refrained from taking stricter actions.
