Press Release, 5.08.2019

The electoral commissions of Nizhny Novgorod registered Yabloko’s Yevgeny Dolgopolov and Nikita Antonenko as candidates for deputies of the City Duma of Nizhny Novgorod. Svetlana Falkonskaya was denied registration due to insufficient number of valid voter signatures.

According to the Territorial Electoral Commissions, 22 of 172 signatures given in support of Svetlana Falkonskaya were invalid. The commission said that most of them did not correspond to the base of the migration department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

“I will come to every voter whose signature was announced invalid because I believe that the data of the Ministry of Internal Affairs did not correspond to reality,” said Svetlana Falkonskaya, Yabloko’s unregistered candidate to the City Duma for constituency No. 16.

“Once again, electoral commissions set an example of the fact that a signature collection mechanism was created to prevent independent candidates from participating in elections. Olympiada Usanova and Svetlana Falkonskaya had to run in constituencies Nos. 9 and 16 so that compete against candidates from United Russia, and, obviously the commission did not register them to remove strong rivals,” said Oleg Rodin, Chairman of the Nizhny Novgorod Yabloko.

Photo: Yevgeny Dolgopolov

Earlier candidates for deputies of the City Duma of Nizhny Novgorod from Yabloko submitted to electoral commission over 500 signatures of Nizhny Novgorod voters in support of their nomination. According to the results of the verification of the signatures, the working groups of the respective electoral commissions recommended to register the following Yabloko candidates to the City Duma of Nizhny Novgorod: Yevgeny Dolgopolov (constituency No. 9) and Nikita Antonenko (constituency No. 24).

Nikita Antonenko received threats in connection with his intention to run in the elections, but police refused to initiate a criminal case.

Photo: Nikita Antonenko

The by-elections to the City Duma of Nizhny Novgorod will be held in single-mandate constituencies Nos. 9, 15, 16, 21 and 24 on a single voting day on 8 September. The mandates became vacant after resignation and early termination of powers of some deputies. Four candidates from Nizhny Novgorod Yabloko intended to participate in the elections: Yevgeny Dolgopolov, programmer of telecommunication systems (district No. 9), lawyer Svetlana Falkonskaya (district No. 24), Nikita Antonenko, urbanist (district No. 24) and Alexander Zamishlyayev (district No. 15), construction worker.