Statement by the YABLOKO faction in the St.Petersburg Legislative Assembly, 03.02.2016

Dear Deputies!

The YABLOKO faction in St.Petersburg Legislative Assembly does not support the bill of St.Petersburg “On the election of deputies of the St.Petersburg Legislative Assembly” which includes the introduction of a mixed electoral system which was initiated “orally” on 3 February, 2016.

The procedure of introduction of the bill itself, with sudden “submission” of the draft into the agenda, which was not discussed with all the factions of the Legislative Assembly (despite the promise of the Legislative Assembly heads to give at least two weeks to examine the text), clearly demonstrates the intention of the authors of the bill from the United Russia party to force the draft anyway.

Introduction of a mixed electoral system – with majority constituencies – will inevitably lead to the reduction of representativity of the city parliament which is ensured only by the proportional electoral system that guarantees protection of interests of voters with different political views. Experience demonstrates that majority constituencies are increasingly influenced by the administrative resource and election fraud there is greater as compared to the proportional system of elections. In a single-mandate constituency votes given for all the candidates except for the winner are wasted. The YABLOKO faction considers this unacceptable.

The draft bill keeps the norm of the so-called voting “at a place of temporal residence” of voters, which leads to serious violations due to the lack of independent control of behalf of election observers, as the elections to the St.Petersburg Legislative Assembly in 2011 showed. Moreover, voting of military servicemen, which is one of the major factors of the “administrative resource”, was also preserved in the bill.

YABLOKO is certain that the only goal of such urgent forcing of the draft is another “fitting of the rules to the results” on behalf of [the ruling] United Russia [party] so that to create favorable conditions at elections for this party and unfavorable conditions for the parliamentary opposition.

The YABLOKO faction will solidary vote against the bill.

Grigory Yavlinsky,

Head of the YABLOKO faction,

The St.Petersburg Legislative Assembly

It should be noted that, despite the fact that the representatives of all the parliamentary factions but for United Russia spoke against the bill from the tribune, the draft was supported by 32 votes in the first reading against 12 deputies voting against it and one abstaining.