Press Release, 1.08.2019

The working group of the territorial electoral commission of the city of Karabulak rejected 14 of the 84 signatures of citizens that the regional branch of the Yabloko party submitted to the electoral commission to take part in the elections to the City Council. After verification, the party candidates had less than 76 signatures, the minimum required for registration.

Ruslan Mutsolgov, Chairman of the regional branch of the party in Ingushetia, noted that Yabloko candidates collected 150 signatures of citizens in support of their nomination and selected the ideal ones for submission to the electoral commission.

Despite this, on 31 July, the working group of the territorial electoral commission with the participation of members of the electoral commission, officers of the Federal Security Service, the representatives of the interior and an expert of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ingushetia recognized several signatures in support of Yabloko candidate invalid, including the signatures of Ruslan Mutsolgov, his sister and neighbours. According to the working group, the signatures and the dates on the subscription sheets were put by different people violating the requirements that the date and the signature should be put down by the person signing in support of the candidate.

“All this is an outright lie. We strictly complied with the requirements to the entire technical side of the issue: people signed for the candidates and put the date, ” the leader of the Ingush Yabloko said.

The final meeting of the Territorial Electoral Commission of Karabulak, scheduled on Saturday 3 August, will decide whether the Ingush Yabloko will be allowed to run in the elections to the City Council of Karabulak or not. Yabloko candidates intend to bring to the meeting statements of the people whose signatures were rejected.

The municipal elections are to be held in Ingushetia on September 8, with the exception of the town of Sunzha, where the elections of deputies of the city council were held a year ago. The City Council of Karabulak has 20 deputies.

The list of candidates from the Yabloko party contains 17 candidates: public figures and civil activists, including members of the popular protest movement against changing the borders of the republic in favour of the neighbouring Chechnya.

Yabloko was the only party that supported the mass-scale protest of thousands of the residents of Ingushetia against amendments to the constitutional law on referendum, allowing the authorities of the republic to solve the issues of the region’s borders without the consent of its residents. Nikolai Rybakov, Yabloko Deputy Chairman, arrived in Magas, capital of the Repulic, and spoke at a rally in support of the demands of the residents of the republic. One of the organisers of the protest action was the leader of the Ingush regional branch of the party, Ruslan Mutsolgov.