Press Release, 15.09.2020

Ivan Bolshakov, Deputy Chairman of Yabloko, commented on the statement of Ella Pamfilova, head of the Central Electoral Commission about the party’s observers:

Yesterday at a meeting of the Central Electoral Commission, Ella Pamfilova publicly criticised Yabloko saying that our party sent the least number of observers to the elections and cited the figure “128 people”: “This is already a pattern from the Yabloko party: the fewer observers they have, the louder their denunciatory statements are,” the head of the Central Electoral Commission said.

This is not the first time we have come across information manipulations by the head of the Central Electoral Commission, so we will have to answer to Ella Pamfilova.

First, the Central Electoral Commission knows very well that not only observers, but also members of electoral commissions with an advisory vote, candidates, their proxies and authorised representatives monitor the voting process. This directly follows from Article 29 and Article 30 of the Federal Law “On the Basic Guarantees of Citizens’ Electoral Rights”.

Due to the fact that observers must be sent to polling stations no later than three days before the start of voting, today it is easier to carry out control by the candidates, their authorised representatives and members of electoral commissions with an advisory vote. In these elections, Yabloko had 657 candidates, about 500 proxies and authorised representatives, 450 commission members with an advisory vote.

Second, the Kremlin has been on a mass scale canceling elections based on party lists, introducing a majority system almost everywhere. Party lists were only in Tomsk, Kaluga, Orel, Voronezh and the Kostroma region of all the major elections we took part this year, in all other cases there were single-mandate constituencies. In this regard, observers are sent not only by the parties, but also by the candidates. Yabloko and its candidates sent 420 people.

Thus, in total, 2,000 people observed the voting from Yabloko, which was 15 times more than Pamfilova said.

If the Central Electoral Commission counts votes is the same manner, it is not surprising that no one believes in the election results in our country.

It is the responsibility of the electoral commission to respond to complaints of violations, ensure competitive elections and fair vote count, rather than judge observers and criticise parties.

 Ivan Bolshakov

Is Deputy Chair of the Yabloko party. Political analyst. Member of the Russian Association of Political Science. Head of the Analytical Department of Yabloko.