Press Release, 1.05.2025

Photo by Wikimedia Commons

This is already the fifth refusal to register initiative groups that residents of the Pskov Region have received from the regional Electoral Commission. Previously, residents of the Gdovsky, Sebezhsky, Ostrovsky and Pushkinogorsky Districts declared their legal right to determine the structure of local government in a referendum. The Electoral Commission did not register any of the groups.

Under the conditions of the regional law with a deliberately created prohibitive norm concerning the number of members of an initiative group of a referendum which should amount to exactly 30 people (no more and no less), residents of the Pskov District put forward three initiatives with the same objectives, but in three different compositions of initiative groups. All three groups were refused on the basis of the discrepancy between the number of participants and the requirements of the regional law.

A group of 33 people was recognised as exceeding the number permitted by the regional law. However in another group of exactly 30 people, the Electoral Commission excluded one participant for allegedly providing false information. The third group, formed from 30 people, (information on its members was presented fully corresponding the information of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Pskov Region), was perceived as a group of 33 people.

The Electoral Commission once again stated that since the method for electing the head is already enshrined in the regional law, a referendum cannot be held. Groups from the Pushkinogorsky and Sebezhsky districts received a refusal under the same pretext.

The Electoral Commission is convinced that there cannot be referendums on the issue of electing the head in the areas transformed into municipal districts, because this issue has already been resolved by the regional law on local self-government. Citizens are asking for a local referendum to be held precisely in order to change the method for electing the head in their municipalities.

Alexei Maksimov, a member of the Electoral Commission with the right to vote from Yabloko, filed a dissenting opinion, where he pointed out that the approach of the Electoral Commission, denying the possibility of putting the issue to a referendum if this issue is already regulated by law, does not ensure the supreme nature of the referendum, and blocks the holding of referendums aimed at changing the current legal norms. This contradicts the very idea of ​​a referendum as a way of adopting legal norms regardless of the will of the current authorities.

In addition, Alexei Maksimov noted, the Electoral Commission of the Pskov Region is not authorised to check the compliance of issues submitted to a local referendum with the requirements of the current legislation. This is the competence of the Assembly of Deputies of the Pskov District.

It should be noted that citizens in the Novgorod Region were also denied the opportunity to hold a referendum on preserving local self-government.