Press Release, 7.08.2019

The Central Electoral Commission finally removed Yelena Rusakova, candidate from the Yabloko party, from elections to the Moscow City Duma.

The reason for refusal in registration was a notary’s mistake when registering 361 signatures. Despite all the arguments of the representatives of Yelena Rusakova, they were not counted in favour of the candidate.

“Electoral eights of dozens of thousands of people have been violated due to a typo of a notary, which does not matter,” that is how Yelena Rusakova commented on the decision of the Central Electoral Commission. “They are fitting the task to the answer. Otherwise, it is not possible for them to increase the percentage of default signatures so that to reject registration. But they did not reject signatures of other candidates from the same notary.”

Yesterday the lawyer of the headquarters of Yelena Rusakova said at a meeting of the working group of the Central Electoral Commission that the decision to refuse registration to the Yabloko candidate would be appealed up to the European Court of Human Rights.

Yesterday it became known that two more candidates from Yabloko were refused registration: Andrei Babushkin, member of the presidential Human Rights Council and member of Yabloko’s Federal Bureau, and Sergei Mitrokhin, member of the Yabloko Federal Political Committee. Both candidates will now seek registration through the courts.

It should be noted that only three of eight candidates from Yabloko, who were able to collect the required number of signatures, were registered in the election. These are Yevgeny Bunimovich, Commissioner for the Children’s Rights in Moscow (Electoral District No. 6 – Golovinsky, Levoberezhny, Khovrino, and part of Western Degunino districts), Maxim Kruglov, expert of Yabloko’s Anti-Corruption Policy Centre (Electoral District No. 14 – Alekseyevsky, Butyrsky, Maryina Roshcha, Ostankinsky and Rostokino districts) and Architect Daria Besedina (Electoral District No. 8, – Airport, Voikovsky, Koptevo and Sokol districts).