Press Release, 24.12.2019

The Moskovsky District Court of St.Petersburg upheld the lawsuit from Yabloko candidates demanding cancellation of the results of the recount of votes at polling station No 1290 of the MosKovskaya Zastava municipality, which resulted in two mandates being stolen from Yabloko.

After the decision comes into force, Yabloko members Kirill Kasimov and Dmitry Dekhambayev will receive the mandates in this municipality (they were the plaintiffs in the case). Alexander Shatyrkin, representative of the ruling United Russia party, and self-nominated Pavel Tripolka will lose their mandates.

According to the plaintiffs, the recount of votes redistributed the votes exactly in favour of Shatyrkin and Tripolka. The defendants have the right to appeal the decision of the district court to a court of a higher instance.

Maxim Katz, head of Yabloko’s election headquarters in the municipal elections in St. Petersburg, noted that it is possible to shoot a thriller on the scenario of the past municipal elections in the Moskovskaya Zastava,  possibly with a happy ending, but there are two trials ahead for the candidates, if the court takes the side of the law, the Yabloko party will get five more mandates.

“The crooks carried out “secret recounts” at some polling stations, running away with ballots, rewrote the results and stole ten mandates, in three out of four districts this was recorded on video and today we have won the first trial. In January there will be two more,” the head of the party’s election headquarters in the municipal elections in St. Petersburg emphasised.

“If all this ends well, Yabloko will have eight mandates and three more mandates for independent candidates, United Russia will be in the minority despite all efforts,” Maxim Katz added.

Now there is only one deputy from Yabloko and one from the Just Russia party in the Moskovskaya Zastava municipal district. The United Russia faction there consists of 11 people, six self-nominated, one deputy was elected from the LDPR party.

It should be noted that earlier Vasileostrovsky District Court partially satisfied the claim of Ivan Starikov, Yabloko’s candidate for deputies in municipal district No 7. He was returned his stolen mandate. In addition, the court upheld the demands of Yabloko candidates to annul the results of the recount in the constituency No. 22. If the city court of St. Petersburg leaves the decision unchanged, the stolen mandates will be returned to candidates from Yabloko Alexei Zakharov and Natalia Nevzorova.

It should be noted that according to the results of the St. Petersburg municipal campaign, 99 candidates were elected as municipal deputies from Yabloko.

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 held with numerous violations and were accompanied by scandals: unlawful prohibition and removal of candidates from the elections, lawsuits and open fraud – 24 seats from deputies were stolen after the election day with the use of the technology of “recounting” of votes.

Yabloko lawyers filed lawsuits in courts to challenge the outcome of municipal elections at the polling stations where the results of voting were rigged.