| Electoral authorities in St Petersburg have announced
the final list of officially registered candidates to the governor's post.
Miraculously, the names of the vice-governor Anna Markova and the Yabloko
candidate Mikhail Amosov
were included. The latter told a news conference on Tuesday how clumsily
and inappropriately the city police had probed the authenticity of signature
lists submitted by the candidates to the city electoral commission.
On Tuesday two interactive news conferences were held simultaneously in Moscow
and St. Petersburg. In St. Petersburg the journalists were addressed by
the Yabloko candidate for the governor's post, deputy of the city's Legislative
Assembly Mikhail Amosov; in Moscow he was backed by the deputy head of
the Yabloko party, the State Duma deputy Sergei
Mitrokhin.
Yabloko activists were prompted to convene an unplanned news conference
by the scandal that flared up after the results of the examination into
the authenticity of signature lists submitted to the city electoral commission
were announced.
It transpired that this year the main police directorate of St. Petersburg
had sought to assist the city electoral authorities by checking the authenticity
of 20 per cent of the signatures submitted by candidates. By law, to be
officially registered as a candidate to the governor's post, a person
is required to submit 37,000 electoral signatures .
The results of the preliminary check carried out by a working group
of the city electoral commission revealed only minor errors in the lists.
However, the matter took quite a different turn when the police authorities
began examining signatures.
In particular, the police invalidated 35 per cent of the signatures
on Mikhail Amosov's list. The police said it had detected discrepancies
between the voters' ID documents, their dates of birth, home addresses
and other personal data. Consequently, Amosov practically lost all chances
of becoming officially registered as a candidate: by law, the lists cannot
contain more than 25 per cent invalid signatures. The main police directorate
only forwarded the results of the check to the city electoral commission
only on August 3, whereas August 5 was the last day when candidates could
obtain registration.
Hence, Amosov had only one day to refute the results of the police check:
miraculously, in that one day he managed to gather sufficient evidence
and prove that in 63 cases police had presented erroneous data regarding
ID documents and the personal data of signatories.
In particular, one of them, the former State Duma deputy Yuri Nesterov,
Amosov brought to the news conference and produced his passport and data
which had nothing in common with what the report of the main police directorate.
Furthermore, the police had even invalidated the signature of Amosov's
sister. "I was informed that my sister does not reside at the address
indicated in the list, although I personally can warrant that she does,"
Amosov told the press on Tuesday.
The city police directorate even claimed that there was no such address
in St. Petersburg as 19/21 Botkinskaya Street, where the dormitory of
the military-medical academy is situated. According to Amosov, there is
such an address and there are people living there.
To be on the safe side, Amosov's aides took the photo of the building
and presented it to the city electoral commission. Besides, without any
grounds whatsoever the city police directorate had invalidated all signatures
from military servicemen, as well as those from people with new Russian
passports issued in their names instead of the old Soviet ones in
2003.
Owing to all those efforts Mikhail Amosov managed to convince electoral
officials that the conclusions of the police were unsubstantiated and
reduce the share of invalid signatures on his list from 35 per cent to
19 per cent, which made him eligible for registration.
Remarkably, Amosov was not the only one of Valentina Matviyenko' s potential
rivals, whose positions are viewed as more or less strong. For instance,
the vice-governor Anna Markova was forced to spend her weekend refuting
the report from the city main police directorate which had claimed that
28 per cent of the signatures on her list were invalid.
The police authority also had serious misgivings about deputy of the city
legislature Alexei Timofeyev, who actively campaigns against Matvieynko.
However, according to Timofeyev's aide Alexei Lomov, Timoveyev's election
headquarters had managed to "restore" half of the 2,500 invalidated
signatures by midday on Tuesday.
On the basis of the latest check Yabloko activists have drawn up their
conclusions. In Moscow Mitrokhin stressed the need to consider the "rapid
process of politicisation of the power structures, first and foremost,
of the police authorities".
"Maybe this is connected to the fact that the Interior Ministry
is headed by a political figure," Mitrokhin said. According to the
Yabloko deputy chairman, the activities of Boris Gryzlov, who does not
conceal his sympathy forUnited Russia, "are starting to exceed certain
limits".
See also:
Gubernatorial
elections in St.Petersburg 2003
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