THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF RUSSIA AND OTHERS v. RUSSIA JUDGMENT 9 Ministry was asked to start monitoring the content of major information programmes of the five nationwide TV channels. 31. On 2 December 2003 Mr Zyuganov attempted to contact the directors of two leading nationwide television channels directly, but they denied any wrongdoing on their part. He then brought the matter to the attention of the CEC. F. The applicants’ attempt to invalidate the results of the elections 32. On 28 September 2004 the applicants lodged a claim with the Supreme Court for invalidation of the results of the 2003 electoral campaign as certified by the CEC’s decision of 19 December 2003 (see paragraph 8 above). The CEC participated in the proceedings as the defendant. 33. In their voluminous submissions, the applicants relied on the results of the monitoring of five nationwide television channels in September – December 2003 which revealed that opposition parties and candidates received much less coverage than United Russia. They further referred to the unlawful electoral campaigning for United Russia by the President. They also complained that the five main nationwide television channels had waged a wave of negative publicity against the first applicant political party. The applicants submitted to the Supreme Court transcripts of all the television programmes, as well as video recordings, numbering 190 videocassettes. 34. The case was tried by the Supreme Court Justice Zaytsev, sitting in a single-judge formation. The first hearing was held on 16 December 2004. Before the start of the trial and at the first several hearings the applicants lodged a number of procedural motions, seeking discovery of new evidence, summoning of additional witnesses and experts, obtaining examination of certain written materials, video recordings etc. According to the applicants, nearly all motions lodged by them were refused by the judge without good reason and/or in breach of the domestic procedural rules. The Government contested that; they stressed that the same judge granted a number of motions introduced by the applicants. Furthermore, according to the applicants, at the first hearing the judge said that by lodging so many motions the applicants tried to protract the proceedings. On four occasions the applicants challenged the judge, but he refused to withdraw from the case. 35. On 16 December 2004 the Supreme Court dismissed the claim. The Supreme Court found no violations of electoral law capable of undermining the genuine will of the voters. The Supreme Court noted, in particular, the following: “The court is not in a position to accept the arguments of [the applicants] that the information coverage of [the 2003 electoral campaign] was conducted with such egregious violations of electoral law, namely, preferential media coverage of one