Russian Central Election Commission head Vladimir Churov, the man at the eye of the storm raised by allegations of vote fraud in December 4 parliamentary elections, challenged the commission to discuss his dismissal on Thursday.
But the motion was defeated, with only four of the commission’s 15 members voting in favor, the commission's press secretary said.
“I ask that the issue of the dismissal of the head of the Russian Election Commission, Vladimir Churov, be put on the agenda,” said Churov, who was dubbed “the wizard” after the December 4 elections, which saw allegations of massive vote fraud in favor of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party.
Churov’s move is the fourth attempt to start a discussion about his dismissal. The previous three tries were made by Communist Party representative Kirill Serdyukov, who has an advisory role on the Election Commission.
Serdyukov’s proposals were only supported by another communist, Yevgeny Kolyushin.
Earlier Churov said that he would not resign despite demands by many critics, adding that it was unfair to focus the public discussions about the election results on him.
He also accused his critics of falsifying video clips showing alleged election violations.
Meanwhile, 64 percent of Russians do not even know who Churov is, according to a survey conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), a Kremlin-connected pollster.
Among the respondents who had heard of Churov, only five percent had a positive assessment of his job performance, 19 percent were indifferent and nine percent - negative. Three percent had no opinion.
The poll surveyed 1,500 people in 43 Russian regions on January 14-15.
