Press Release, 29.03.2021

Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

On 29 March, 2021, the first meeting of the Central Electoral Commission of the new convocation took place. Chairman of the Yabloko party Nikolai Rybakov spoke at the meeting.

According to the Yabloko Chaiman, it is necessary to increase confidence in the elections, and the fact that people who protested are sent to pre-trial detention centres, and the fact that the defendants in so-called “the Moscow riots case” (mass protests against non-registration of independent candidates in the Moscow City Duma election in 2019 and election fraud led to arrests and imprisonment of the dissenting) have not yet been released, does not help build confidence. “We are all interested so that people would really see their representatives on the rostrum of the State Duma, rather than in police vans and pre-trial detention centres,” Rybakov said.

Rybakov also said it was impossible to conduct an election campaign when public events and single pickets were banned in the country, but concerts were allowed: “When everyone sees that concerts are taking place, but it is impossible to go to a picket, then this is lack of freedom!”.

According to the Yabloko Chairman, the best result of the Central Electoral Commission’s work will be two situations:

“The first – if people understand that they come to work as observers not to fight falsifications and stuffing, but in order to see the results of their candidate earlier [than it is announced]. I have been in politics since 1995. I see how we have been continuously facing fraud, stop doing this!

Second, if the media’s attention to who became a member of the Central Electoral Commission and who became its Chair turns very little, because they will know that in any case the elections in Russia are fair, and the Central Electoral Commission is just a routine working body.”