Press Release, 22.05.2024

Photo by the Press Service of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg

Deputies of the Yabloko faction voted against discrimination against “foreign agents” at the level of city laws. The parliamentary majority voted to ban “foreign agents” from being elected and holding public office. On 22 May, the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg was engaged in “bringing the city legislation into conformity with the federal legislation”. The latter had been supplemented by regulations banning “foreign agents” from participating in elections at any level and from being current deputies. The party is preparing an appeal to the Constitutional Court.

According to the current legislation, the Legislative Committee has three months to bring city laws into compliance with federal ones, but the four adopted bills were introduced in a hurry. They can be collectively called “the laws discriminating against citizens who do not agree with the government’s policies and receive the label “foreign agent” for their position”.

“What, if not discrimination, is the prohibition to be elected in elections to those included in the register of “foreign agents”, and the deprivation of already elected deputies included in this register of their mandates received from voters? How does this relate to the constitutional guarantees of democracy, with Article 3 of the Constitution that the people are the only source of power? the Yabloko faction leader Alexander Shishlov asked a rhetorical question from the deputies.

It should be noted that a norm has come into force at the federal level that a person recognised as a “foreign agent” cannot be a candidate, an election observer, or hold public office, and if he/she already holds one, his job or mandate will be taken away.

Yabloko considers the law on “foreign agents” to be discrimination, noting that citizens are recognised as “foreign agents” in the offices of the Ministry of Justice, not even in court. At the same time, foreign funding is no longer necessary to achieve this status; it is enough to disagree with the authorities. “Disseminated false information about decisions made by public authorities of the Russian Federation and the policies pursued by them, opposed a special military operation” is one of the formulations of the reasons for recognition as a “foreign agent”.

“Those who adopted the federal law, which they propose to bring the St. Petersburg laws into conformity with, crossed out both the constitutional norms and the legal positions of the Constitutional Court, establishing that by a decision of an executive body taken extra-judicially, citizens are deprived of voting rights, and the results of the people’s expressions of will are annulled,” Alexander Shishlov emphasises.

The Yabloko party is confident that the new “norms” contradict Article 3 of the Constitution, which runs that “the bearer of sovereignty and the only source of power in the Russian Federation is its multinational people,” rather than a nameless and unelected clerk-official from the Ministry of Justice.

In this regard, Yabloko suggested that the deputies not disgrace St. Petersburg by parliament’s complicity in the political reprisal of dissidents and appeal to the Constitutional Court. The party’s lawyers are already preparing a draft request to the Constitutional Court.