The Ministry of Justice hurried to add a candidate from the St. Petersburg branch of Yabloko to the register of foreign agents in order to disrupt her registration
Press release, 13.07.2024
Photo: Anna Karulicheva with her team / Photo by regional branch of Yabloko
On 12 July, three hours before the meeting of the electoral commission, which was supposed to consider the issue of registering Anna Karulicheva, a Yabloko candidate and former deputy of the Narva Okrug municipality in St.Petersburg, the Ministry of Justice urgently included her in the list of foreign agents. According to the Ministry of Justice, she “disseminated false information about the electoral system of the Russian Federation”.
This is the first time that the Ministry of Justice has not hesitated to declare foreign agents on Friday several hours earlier than usual. The Ministry used to do it at 21:00, but this time it did it at 17:00. Anna Karulicheva is one of the strongest candidates from Yabloko in the municipal elections in St. Petersburg. She leads a team in the Narva district of St.Petersburg that has been protecting the interests of residents for several years.
Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov considers the actions of the Ministry of Justice to be an example of an outright deliberate removal of a candidate from elections using a repressive law.
“We realise that the authorities are really afraid of the candidates from Yabloko, who are running for elections under the slogan “For Peace and for Freedom” and are using any means to prevent them from participating in the elections and presenting their programmes to voters,” Rybakov emphasised.
According to Alexander Shishlov, Chairman of the St. Petersburg Yabloko, today’s decision of the Ministry of Justice keeps on the unconstitutional practices of extrajudicial deprivation of citizens’ of their voting rights.
“It all began in St. Petersburg, when Yabloko’s Boris Vishnevsky was recognised as a foreign agent, which deprived him of the opportunity to participate in the gubernatorial elections. Now this technology is being used on Yabloko candidates in municipal elections to prevent them from running. Yabloko will do everything possible to support our candidates,” Alexander Shishlov noted.
It should be noted that a registered candidate cannot be declared a foreign agent, so officials hurried to include Karulicheva in the list of foreign agents before the registration issue was resolved, so as not to give her the opportunity to participate in the elections.
Posted: July 15th, 2024 under Elections, Freedom of Speech, Human Rights, Regional and Local Elections, Regional and Local Elections 2024, Yabloko's Regional Branches.