Press Release, 22.08.2023

Photo: Nikolai Rybakov / Photo by Dmitry Lebedev, Kommersant

Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov sent appeals to the Central Electoral Commission, the Public Prosecutor General’s Office and the Higher Judges’ Qualifications Board in connection with the situation in the Pskov region, where the courts supported by the regional electoral commission and the public prosecutor’s office, removed at once seven lists of Yabloko candidates from the municipal elections.

Territorial electoral commissions first registered Yabloko lists in Krasnogorodsky, Loknyansky, Novorzhevsky, Opochetsky, Pechorsky, Pytalovsky and Strugo-Krasnensky districts of the region, but soon the district courts received lawsuits from representatives of three parties (A Just Russia, The Party of Growth and the Pensioners’ Party) demanding cancellation of the registration.

The essence of the claims of the plaintiffs is that Artur Gaiduk, Chairman of the Pskov Yabloko elected on June 24, allegedly could not act as head of the Yabloko branch until 18 July, until the fiscal service entered information about him in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. The Yabloko conference at which the lists of party candidates were put forward took place on 16 July, therefore, according to the plaintiffs, Artur Gaiduk could not sign the documents of the conference.

This position is contrary to the norms of the federal laws “On Political Parties”, “On Public Associations”, “On the Basic Guarantees of Citizens’ Electoral Rights”, as well as the decisions of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, the By-Laws of the Yabloko party, and the fundamentals of corporate law of the Russian Federation. It is well known that the political powers of the head of the structural unit of a political party come into force immediately after the election.

The chairpersons of all seven territorial electoral commissions did not appear in court. Staff members of the regional electoral commission acted on behalf of them by proxy. Instead of defending the jointly adopted legal decisions of the territorial electoral commissions on the registration of Yabloko lists of candidates, they recognised the claims of Yabloko’s competitors and asked the courts to satisfy these claims.

According to the appeal of the Yabloko Chairman to the head of the Central Electoral Commission, Ella Pamfilova, these actions testify to the participation of the regional electoral commission in obstructing the legitimate activities of the Yabloko party during the elections.

Nikolai Rybakov also cites the words of Igor Sopov, Chairman of the Pskov Region Electoral Commission, which discredit the electoral system in the eyes of election participants and the general public. The Yabloko leader asks the Central Electoral Commission to consider whether Sopov is suitable for his post.

In an appeal to Public Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov, Nikolai Rybakov points out that representatives of the Pskov Region Public Prosecutor’s Office essentially took the side of the plaintiffs and, thus, took part in political activities in the interests of specific individuals, which is prohibited by law.

“A revision of the established all-Russian legal, including judicial, practice in one region can lead to the destruction of the unified legal space of Russia, affect the legal rights of all political parties operating in the Russian Federation and the candidates they have nominated,” Rybakov’s appeal to the Public Prosecutor General runs.

Rybakov asks the Public Prosecutor General’s Office to check the legality of the actions and position of the representatives of the public prosecutor’s offices and restore the rule of law.

In the appeal to the Chairman of the Higher Judges’ Qualifications Board, Nikolai Timoshin, the leader of Yabloko asks to consider the issue of bringing to disciplinary responsibility judges of the Pushkinogorsky, Opochetsky, Pechorsky, Pytalovsky, Strugo-Krasnensky and Bezhanitsky district courts of the Pskov region.

When considering the statements of claim, the judges of different district courts wrote seven judicial acts of the same content, in which they established the circumstances of the case in the same way and motivated their conclusions in the same way, Rybakov notes.

“The decisions of the courts were prepared according to a single template, and the judges implemented the ordered conclusions into the decisions according to it, preserving the same identity in entire paragraphs, and even pages. In some solutions, mistakes were made, that illustrate the insertion of “necessary” sentences in the middle of a paragraph, breaking the grammar of the text. The sequence of paragraphs in all seven decisions indicates that seven different judges thought the same way down to the commas,” the appeal runs.

At the same time, none of Yabloko’s arguments refuting the position of the plaintiffs received a substantive, motivated assessment from the courts in any of the decisions.

These circumstances indicate the presence of coordinated actions to legitimise illegal methods of political struggle through the courts, Rybakov writes. He also asks the Higher Judges’ Qualifications Board to establish the source of extra-procedural interference in the activities of Pskov judges.

It should be noted that the decisions of seven district courts have not entered into force yet. On 18 August, the Yabloko party appealed against them in the Pskov Regional Court.

In addition, the Pskov Yabloko continues to challenge the refusal to certify a single list of its candidates put forward in the elections of deputies of the Nevelsky district. The list was not certified by the territorial electoral commission for a reason not provided for by law. The territorial electoral commission considered that the Bureau of the regional Yabloko branch could not exclude a candidate from its list of candidates, if the candidate failed to provide a complete set of documents for nomination, despite the fact that this authority of the Bureau is established by federal law and provided for by the By-Laws of the party.

The Pskov Yabloko continues all its election campaigns, including those of thirteen candidates nominated by the party in single-mandate constituencies. All of them are registered, there have been no claims to cancel their registration.