Photo: Ludmila Alexeyeva, Sergei Mitrokhin
and Grigory Yavlinsky.
The YABLOKO party is going to complete creation of a fund
for citizens donations for organisation of election monitoring
and encourages people to become observers on the election
day March 4.
"Today we are initiation creation of a special fund,
which we are calling the Fund for Promotion of Public Control
over Elections", said Sergei Mitrokhin, YABLOKO Chairman,
a press conference in the Interfax office on Monday.
He also proposed a brief name for the fund - "Transparent
Elections". According to Mitrokhin, the establishment
of this fund is in its final stage already.
"We will address the citizens of Russia with a proposal
to send donations to the fund. The money will go exclusively
to cover the cost of work of lawyers engaged in litigation,
as well as training of observers," Mitrokhin said.
He also stressed that it would be a public fund, not affiliated
with any party. "And we are establishing a Supervisory
Board consisting of representatives and leaders of the most
influential non-governmental organisations of our country
and mass media so that to ensure transparency of the spending
of these funds," he noted.
According to Mitrokhin, the Supervisory Board, would, in
particular, include Lyudmila Alexeyeva, head of Russia's oldest
human rights organisation the Moscow Helsinki Group, Oleg
Orlov, Chairman of the Memorial Human Rights Centre and Dmitry
Muratov, Editor-in-Chief of Novaya Gazeta.
"I think these people do not need any recommendations,
their public weight allows to provide guarantees of absolute
honesty and transparency in spending of electoral funds",
Mitrokhin added.
Ludmila Alexeyeva who was present at the press conference,
supported the establishment of the Fund and expressed her
confidence in its success. According to Alexeyeva, "an
initiative coming from below should get clear organisational
forms."
"We are creating a machinery for [public] control over
elections, which sooner or later will control all 96,000 polling
stations in the country. And it would be fair and honest,"
said Grigory Yavlinsky about the establishment of the fund.
According to Yavlinsky, the fact that "the courts today
deny satisfaction of complaints means marginalisation of
the state. This means that a citizen can not find satisfaction
in court, he added.
Sergei Mitrokhin urged the Russian citizens to come to the
polling stations on the voting day March 4, as well as become
public observers on election day.
"If people come to the polling stations and become observers
at these polling stations, provided they have had training
as observers before, this means they will be qualified observers
and, in fact, this is the solution to the problem of fair
elections," Mitrokhin said.
In this situation, the election fraud will be virtually impossible,
Mitrokhin noted.
Mitrokhin also called on all the parliamentary political
parties to unite and file a lawsuit in the Supreme Court so
that to recognise the parliamentary elections of December
4, 2011, null and void. He said that after the elections he
proposed to the parties several solutions so that to remedy
the unfair results. In particular, according to Mitrokhin,
he proposed to the parliamentary opposition factions to refuse
their deputies' mandates, as well as demand resignation of
Vladimir Churov, member of Central Electoral Commission.
"However, no one has taken our advice yet. Perhaps they
feel some pressure, so we propose one more option - to unite
and file a joint claim to the Supreme Court on recount of
the votes and possible cancellation election results,"
he said.
Mitrokhin also reiterated that in 2003 the YABLOKO party
and the Communist Party filed a joint lawsuit in the Supreme
Court.
According to Mitrokhin, if today all parties do this, it
will be a powerful sign of disagreement with the results of
parliamentary elections of December 4, 2011.
Answering journalists questions Grigory Yavlinsky mentioned
Vladimir Putins article in the newspaper Izvestia and outlined
his vision of the fundamental problems of the modern state
and the key issues of its future functioning.
Yavlinsky also told that the future [state] must be built
on very solid foundations: legitimate power, its support by
citizens and citizens belief into its legitimacy.
He also added that a legitimate power can not emerge at the
present scope of lies and fraud.
Yavlinsky said that the key issues for Russia in the future
should be freedom of an individual and protection of human
rights, modern non-oligarchic economy which would not depend
on world energy prices and a modern democratic nature of the
state.
Yavlinsky also spoke of his electoral program "Land-Housing-Roads"
saying that the programme was even more political than economic.
Yavlinsky has a detailed program of action for ten years.
He proposes this program for presidential elections as a democratic
candidate and on behalf of the democratic forces in Russia.
"In today's discussion we can clearly see that that
the stance of the Russian authorities lags behind the modern
global and European development. Such a lag, especially when
it becomes critical, leads to a collapse, " he said.
"2011-2012 are the years determining Russias destiny
in the 21st century," he concluded.
Speaking about the collection of 2 mln of voters signatures
for registration as a candidate in the presidential election
campaign, Yavlinsky said that the decision of such registration
would be political and neither he nor YABLOKO could know whether
the Central Electoral Commission would register Grigory Yavlinsky
despite of collected signatures.
"Submitting signatures to the Central Electoral Commission
is a very important step on our part, moreover it is our public
and civil step, and now there will be a political decision
who can be allowed to participate in elections, and we should
not think that there is some clarity on this issue now. As
far as I understand the situation, there is not any clarity
yet, " Yavlinsky noted.
"Our support - and the signatures showed this is very
large today, so the decision [on our participation in the
presidential elections] will not be adopted easily, he said.
"I can firmly tell you that all the signatures collected
by YABLOKO are real signatures of real voters," he added.
He also recalled that the Central Election Commission should
examine 20% of the total number of signatures, i.e., 400,000
signatures, and such examination will take them a few days.
Yavlinsky also noted that he should be registered if the number
of defected signatures does not exceed 5%.
"This means virtually unlimited possibilities to remove
candidates, which actually is not related to a number of signatures
or their quality," Grigory Yavlinsky said.
See also:
Presidential
Elections 2012
YABLOKO collected
2.1 voters signatures for registration of Grigory Yavlinsky
in the presidential election campaign. Press Release, Janaury
16, 2012.
|
