The
YABLOKO party expresses its indignation by the decision of
the government of St.Petersburg allowing Gazprom to build
a 403 m high skyscraper opposite the Smolny Cathedral.
In accordance with the City Planning Code Gazprom cannot
get such a permit: Gazprom’s motive that construction of a
lower building within the 100 m limit envisaged by St.Petersburg
law is commercially unprofitable can not serve as grounds
for allowing the company to build a skyscraper. In addition
the skyscraper will distort historical panoramas of St.Petersburg,
and this is also prohibited by the St.Petersburg laws. This
will inevitably lead to excluding of St.Petersburg from UNESCO’s
World Heritage, and the city government has been warned about
this many times.
The decision by the city government (first of all by Governor
Valentina Matviyenko who has been stubbornly supporting the
project) despite of all this to do a service to Gazprom represents
flagrant negligence of public opinion, a striking example
of legal nihilism (the heads of the country are so eager to
fight against) and a flagrant example how Gazprom’s commercial
interests overweight the law.
At the negligence of the officials (not to say more), the
gas monopolist raises tariffs emptying the pockets of the
population and in addition to this spends its high profits
so that to disfigure one of the most beautiful cities of the
world – St.Petersburg, bringing irreparable harm to its historical
outlook.
YABLOKO demands from President Dmitry Medvedev to adopt measures
that are in his constitutional competence for urgent revocation
of this unlawful decision.
Sergei Mitrokhin,
Chairman of the YABLOKO party
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