Tiraspol, 11 December. /Novosti Pridnestrovya/. For the sixth time Pridnestrovie is electing the president. Igor Smirnov won the first four elections in the first round. The fifth presidential election in 2011 was conducted in two stages. On the first round of voting, held on 11 December, none of the sixth candidates managed to garner the required 50% +1 vote. Yevgeny Shevchuk (38.53% of the votes) and Anatoly Kaminsky (26.48% of the votes) advanced to the second round. Voter turnout was 58.88%.
The then president, Igor Smirnov, finished third in the first round with 24.82% of the votes and dropped out of the race.
In the second round, which took place on 25 December, Yevgeny Shevchuk won by a landslide. With a voter turnout of 52.46%, he was supported by 73.88% of the voters. Kaminsky, on the contrary, received considerably fewer votes — only 19.6%.
In 2016, 13 persons initially declared their desire to run for the presidency, with three of them later withdrawing their candidacies and another one even failing to start collecting signatures. Two more applicants — Yevgeny Vyushkov and Grigory Marakutsa — were denied registration as candidates.
Vyushkov was denied due to a high percentage of invalid signatures in his support. Grigory Marakutsa was not registered on the ground that in the past year and a half he has permanently resided in Korolyov, Moscow region, and not in Pridnestrovie.
As a result, seven persons were registered as presidential candidates: sitting President Yevgeny Shevchuk, Chairman of the Supreme Council Vadim Krasnoselsky, former Interior Minister Gennady Kuzmichyov, Prosecutor of the PMR Alexander Deli, former Chairman of the Constitution Court Vladimir Grigoryev, head of the Communist Party of the PMR, Supreme Council member Oleg Khorzhan, video blogger Irina Vasilaky.
However, on 1 December the Tiraspol City Court decided to abolish Gennady Kuzmichyov's registration as a presidential candidate. On 5 December, this decision was upheld by the Supreme Court.
As a result, on 11 December 2016 voters will be able to cast their vote for one of the six candidates or vote against all of them. The name of Kuzmichyov should be manually crossed out from the ballot paper by electoral commission members.
Polling stations will open at 7:00 and close at 20:00.
