Press Release, 15.06.2020

Photo: Boris Vishnevsky

Boris Vishnevsky, Deputy Chairman of Yabloko and head of the party’s faction in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, sent appeals to the Ella Pamfilova, head of the Central electoral Commission, and Sergei Litvinenko, Public Prosecutor of St.Petersburg. Vishnevsky asked them to investigate into the situation of mass-scale coercion of state employees to take absentee voting certificates to vote for Putin’s amendments to the Constitution in the polling stations of the city districts where they should not vote.

Vishnevsky called on Pamfilova and Litvinenko to personally verify the information without transferring this obligation to the city government, which in this case would have to check its own actions.

Boris Vishnevsky also emphasised that he considered the ongoing coercion of state employees to take absentee voting certificates from their precincts and their subsequent vote at other polling stations absolutely unlawful. Such actions violate Article 60 of the Labour Code, which prohibits demanding from the employee anything that is not stipulated by the labour contract, as well as Part 8 of Article 2 of the Law “On Amendment to the Constitution of the Russian Federation”, according to which no one has the right to influence a citizen with the aim of forcing him/her to participate or non-participate in the all-Russian vote, as well as to impede his/her free expression of will.

The leader of the Yabloko faction noted that he had already received signals from 13 organisations — schools, teenage centres, libraries, and the subway. Employees of these institutions complained to the parliamentarian that they were asked to vote in specific places, and mandatory on June 25 and 26.

It should be noted that past week Ella Pamfilova promised that the Central Electoral Commission would check all such statements. A plebiscite for amendments to the Constitution is scheduled for July 1, under the pretext of providing greater security from the coronavirus, the event will be stretched for almost a week – it will be possible to vote within seven days starting from June 25.

The Yabloko Federal Political Committee adopted a statement  “On the principled unacceptability of voting on Putin’s amendments to the Constitution” on July 1.