18 COMMUNIST PARTY OF RUSSIA AND OTHERS v. RUSSIA JUDGMENT particular, did not guarantee all parties and candidates equal access to the media. (b) Victim status 59. The Government submitted that some of the applicants did not have standing to complain about “unfair” elections. Thus, in the 2003 elections the first applicant had obtained seats in the Duma, and the sixth applicant had been elected as an individual member of the Duma. Furthermore, in the following years the first and the second applicant parties had received public funding. Elected members of the first applicant party had received salaries and allowances. (c) Exhaustion of domestic remedies and compliance with Article 13 of the Convention 60. The Government contended that a variety of legal remedies capable of addressing the problem of unfair media coverage had been available to the applicants. The Russian legal system was therefore capable of providing the applicants with “effective remedies”. However, the applicants had failed to use the existing remedies properly. 61. The Government contested the applicants’ arguments that the electoral law was unclear and did not describe with sufficient precision the legal avenues available to candidates to contest violations of electoral law. Candidates had a right to lodge complaints about breaches of electoral law by other candidates and by the mass media with the CEC Working Group on the Information Disputes. During the 2003 campaign the Working Group had examined many applications of that kind, 19 of which had been partially satisfied, whilst 34 had been rejected. The Working Group had repeatedly drawn the attention of the mass media concerned to their obligation to comply with electoral law, communicated complaints to the law-enforcement bodies or to a regional branch of the Ministry of Mass Media and taken “other measures”. As to the applicants’ complaints to the Working Group, the latter had not found any breaches of electoral law related to the media coverage of the election campaign. 62. The candidates could also complain directly to the CEC. Depending on the nature of the complaint, the CEC was entitled to take various actions. The Government gave examples of successful complaints to the CEC and regional electoral commissions. The first and seventh applicants had made use of that remedy; they had complained to the CEC about two episodes: one concerning the speech by Mr Putin on 19 September 2003 (see paragraph 18 above) and another concerning the alleged negative press coverage on the chairmen of the Communist Party. Both had been directed against VGTRK and Channel One. In their application to the Court, however, they had complained about the whole series of episodes that had been shown on five major TV channels. Those other episodes had never