Press Release, 26.06.2019

The Conference of the St. Petersburg branch of Yabloko nominated 547 candidates for deputies of municipal councils in 85 of the city’s total 109 municipalities. The final number of candidates will be even larger, since the election headquarters still receive applications from potential candidates.

Yabloko Deputy Chairman Nikolai Rybakov wished the candidates from Yabloko good luck in the upcoming elections and recalled that in 2000 he won the election in the St. Petersburg municipality Svetlanovskoye.

“In March 2000, we challenged the authorities and won – without any special resources, due to our drive and an honest desire to make our district better. Some of the candidates who are now participating in our St. Petersburg municipal campaign were not even born in 2000. However, an outdated political system still exists. I am sure that the candidates from Yabloko have every chance of winning the elections in St. Petersburg and will help to send the ineffective system into the past. For my part, I will do everything possible to help them in this,” Nikolai Rybakov said.

Maxim Katz, head of the party’s election headquarters in the municipal elections in St. Petersburg, stressed that Yabloko nominated candidates for most of the municipalities of the city. There are complete teams nominated by Yabloko for Tzentralny, Petrogradsly and Vasileostrovsky districts.

“Now there are some difficulties with submitting documents to electoral commissions, because the authorities recollecting the experience of 2017, when Yabloko received many mandates in elections to Moscow municipalities, are afraid that this may repeat, but I think all documents will be submitted, and St. Petersburg residents will be able to make their choice in September,” Maxim Katz said.

He also added that about a third of Yabloko candidates are entrepreneurs or specialists working on top positions; the rest are IT specialists, designers, teachers, and engineers. But there are virtually no public sector workers among the candidates.

Earlier, Yabloko Chairperson Emilia Slabunova, Boris Vishnevsky, head of the Yabloko faction in the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly and candidate for Governor of the city, and Yekaterina Kuznetsova, head of the Yabloko branch in St.Petersburg applied to the Central Electoral Commission and St.Petersburg Electoral Commission asking them to react on multiple violations in registration of candidates on behalf of district electoral commissions. After Yabloko’s appeals, a group of ten officers of the Central Electoral Commission arrived to St. Petersburg with a check. Today the St. Petersburg Electoral Commission confirmed violations of the terms of notification of the appointment of elections in five municipal districts.

Elections in St. Petersburg will be held on a single voting day on 8 September. St Petersburg residents will elect their Governor and municipal deputies. Boris Vishnevsky, MP of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, was nominated by Yabloko to run for the Governor of the city in the gubernatorial election.