However, at least 24 mandates were stolen from Yabloko

Press Release, 16.09.2019

The St. Petersburg municipal campaign was successful for Yabloko: 95 candidates who were nominated or supported by the party were elected municipal deputies. The party received a majority in two districts (Liteiny and Vladimirsky), as well as the largest factions in the Smolninskoye and Malaya Okhta municipalities. In addition, the Yabloko team received 13 seats out of 20 in the Murino municipal district (50.000 residents), which is located on the border of the Leningrad Region and St. Petersburg.

The St. Petersburg municipal elections were accompanied by numerous violations and scandals: unlawful denials to register candidates in the campaign and removal of candidates from the elections, lawsuits and open fraud – 24 mandates were stolen after the voting day by means of  the “recounting” of votes technology.

The most blatant violations occurred in the Ostrov Dekabristov electoral district, where voting machines allegedly failed to initially count 1,784 votes for pro-government candidates. After manual recount of the ballots at night in the administration building of the Vasileostrovsky District, two mandates were stolen from Yabloko. It should be noted that electoral commissions announced that same voting machines correctly counted the ballots at the  gubernatorial elections (conducted in the same premises on the same day), which acting Governor Alexander Beglov won.

The Moskovskaya Zastava electoral district, the electoral commission registered candidates from Yabloko only a week before the voting day; but Yabloko candidates received nine out of ten mandates on the election day 8 September, but they were stolen after the “recount” of ballots (when the ballots lay in the administration for several days).

Yabloko lawyers filed lawsuits to challenge the outcome of municipal elections at the polling stations where they were rigged.

Nikolai Rybakov, Yabloko Deputy Chairman, recalled Yabloko had been widely represented in the municipalities of St.Petersburg before the completely rigged elections in St. Petersburg in 2014. Before that many party members had been deputies and leaders of local self-government bodies.

According to Nikolai Rybakov, the election campaign of 2019, which was especially successful for Yabloko, became possible because people no longer believed in worn-out fake slogans, lies, and dirty tricks during campaigns.

“I wholeheartedly congratulate all those involved in the victory of Yabloko – first of all, our wonderful voters! And the results of the past campaign is such that on 8 September we saw a huge request for changes in our country and a huge request for sincerity in politics, ” Rybakov said.

Maxim Katz, head of the Yabloko election headquarters in the municipal elections in St. Petersburg, emphasised but for falsifications, Yabloko would have received more than 200 mandates, but 95 received in the most difficult conditions are also good.

“The courts [when pro-government candidates started litigation for withdrawal of Yabloko candidates] did not prevent us from putting forward the coolest list of new, young, active, opposition people. We did not play any rigged games, repelled many attempts to introduce “double agents” into our team, created a completely new political force in the city, which, I hope, will change the extremely strange opposition landscape that has developed here. Now we have strong positions in St. Petersburg, as well as in Moscow,” Maxim Katz said.

It should be noted that Yabloko nominated more than 400 candidates for municipal deputies of St. Petersburg.

The results of the St. Petersburg municipal campaign of Yabloko as of electoral district are here. Yabloko mandates are marked in green. Mandates obtained by the United Russia party are marked in black, the CPRF in red, Just Russia in yellow, LDPR in blue, and self-nominated and other in grey.