Press Release, 20.08.2020

On August 19, the Chelyabinsk Regional Court examined the administrative claim of the regional branch of Yabloko, which challenges the decision of the regional electoral commission to refuse to register the list of Yabloko candidates for the upcoming elections to the Legislative Assembly of the region. The Judge refused to satisfy Yabloko’s claim.

“We intend to appeal the court decision. We are waiting for the motivation part, it will be released on August 21, and we will immediately send a complaint to the Court of Appeal. We believe that all the arguments in our claim have been confirmed, we have witnesses who confirm the authenticity of the signatures [put in favour of registration of Yabloko candidates in accordance with the law]. We can still get registered and listed into the bulletin before September 13″, Yaroslav Shcherbakov, Chairman of the Chelyabinsk branch of Yabloko said.

It should be noted that on July 24, the Electoral Commission of the Chelyabinsk region refused to register the list of Yabloko candidates for the election of deputies of the Legislative Assembly stating that the number of defective voters’ signatures in favour of registration of the party in race exceeded the allowed number. This decision was appealed to the Central Electoral Commission. The latter, in turn, at a meeting on August 7 issued a resolution on the legality of the refusal to register Yabloko. The party is challenging the withdrawal of the list of candidates in court.

The Chelyabinsk branch of Yabloko submitted 13,880 voters’ signatures in favour of its registration to the regional electoral commission, of which 22 per cent were rejected by the commission. Yabloko managed to prove some of signatures valid at the Central Electoral Commission meeting, as a result the number of rejected signatures dropped to 19 per cent at the allowed number of 5 per cent. Elections to the Legislative Assembly will take place on 13 September.