Press Release, 24.09.2021

Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

Today, a meeting of the Central Electoral Commission dedicated to summing up the results of the parliamentary elections in 2021 took place. Ella Pamfilova, Chair of the Central Electoral Commission,  refused to give the floor to the leader of the Yabloko party Nikolai Rybakov during the meeting. We are publishing the key points of the speech prepared by Nikolai Rybakov.

1. I would like to thank the voters who voted for Yabloko; even according to official data, there are more than 700,000 of them, but there are certainly much more of them in reality. I would like to thank the members of those electoral commissions who did not let falsifications and violations be committed at their precincts. I would like to thank the candidates who made it to the voting day and those who were unlawfully removed from the elections. I also thank the volunteers and observers who participated in this campaign and those media representatives who objectively covered the course of the election campaign.

2. Elections are not just one month in August and September, they take all the five years between voting days. If there is real competition in these five years, this is for the benefit for the country. If there has been no competition for all five years, then this is a problem for Russia and its future, rather than for the Central Electoral Commission only.

3. An example of a violation in St. Petersburg. Precinct Electoral Commission No. 1616. Electoral district of Boris Vishnevsky [Deputy Chairman of Yabloko and head of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly of St.Petersburg]. The dissenting Precinct Electoral Commission members were removed from the precinct and taken to the police. When counting votes, it turned out that [very popular in St.Petersburg] Boris Vishnevsky received only two votes. Already 50 people have responded to Vishnevsky’s appeal, who voted for Yabloko at this polling station, come to court and witness that they voted for Vishnevsky.

Boris Vishnevsky won in 71 out of 76 precincts during voting for deputies of the St.Petersburg Legislative Assembly, but for the remaining five polling stations demonstrating an abnormally high vote for the ruling United Russia party, and it was at these polling stations that there was no video surveillance and video registration.

4. Despite the support of all actions of the authorities in the elections from the side of special “experts” from “civil society” at today’s meeting, it is important to note that the institution of elections in Russia has not become effective. The 2021 elections are no exception.

5. Elections must be equal and transparent, fair, honest and competitive – these elections are not such.

6. All this results in disappointment of citizens and their distrust to the institution of elections and the authorities that are moulded though such elections. The indicator is vaccination. Russia ranks 106th in the world in terms of vaccination rates, between Paraguay and Timor-Leste.

7. The situation with the elections in the Russian Federation is not a problem of the Central Electoral Commission, it is a national problem. Perhaps holding such dishonest elections is good for retaining power, but for the future of Russia it is bad, it leads the country to a dead end.

8. The State Duma formed in this way will provide one hundred percent support for the policies of Vladimir Putin.

9. We did not recognise the results of the 2003 elections (even when Vladimir Putin congratulated Yabloko on our victory in the evening, and in the morning it turned out that Yabloko did not get mandates the Duma), we did not recognise the results of the elections in 2007, 2011 and 2016.

Yabloko will consider the election results at the meetings of the party’s governing bodies – the Bureau and the Federal Political Committee.