Press Release, 23.07.2019

Sergei Mitrokhin, Yabloko’s candidate to the Moscow City Duma for electoral district No 43 and member of the Federal Political Committee of the Yabloko Party, participated in the meeting of unregistered candidates to the Moscow parliament with Ella Pamfilova, head of the Central Electoral Commission. Mitrokhin stated that the procedure of verification of signatures by electoral commissions was completely “discredited and delegitimised,” therefore the only way out of this situation is registration of all candidates who have collected the required number of voters’ signatures.

“The system of collecting voters’ signatures represents a filter created in order to prevent undesirable candidates from being represented in the bodies of representative and legislative power,” Mitrokhin said in his speech.

He believes that another check of the rejected subscription lists by the employees of the Moscow Electoral Committee and the Central Electoral Commission will not restore confidence in the procedure, which was completely “discredited and delegitimised”. “Any attempt of checking the signatures (once again) will be an imitation, and no one will believe it,” Mitrokhin noted.

According to Mitrokhin, the only way out of this situation, is to register all candidates who have collected the required number of voters’ signatures. “Register all of us and let us compete with each other in fair elections, which I hope will take place. This is how the deputies of the new Moscow City Duma will emerge,” Mitrokhin stressed.

The meeting of Ella Pamfilova with candidates for deputies of the Moscow City Duma was held in the Central Electoral Commission on 23 July. In addition to Sergey Mitrokhin, other candidates from Yabloko participate in it: Yelena Rusakova, head of the Municipal Council of Gagarinsky district of Moscow (district No 37), Kirill Goncharov, editor of the newspaper “We Are Muscovites” (district No 32),  Anastasia Brukhanova, municipal deputy of the Shchukino district (district No 42). Andrei Babushkin, member of the presidential Human Rights Council and Yabloko candidate (district No 11), who was denied registration, was unable to attend the meeting.

On 17 July, the Yabloko party appealed to the Moscow City Electoral Committee against the refusal to register all five of its candidates. Later all the five candidates also filed their complaints there.

Three of the eight candidates from Yabloko were registered for the elections. They are Yevgeny Bunimovich, Ombudsman for Children’s Rights in Moscow (district No 6), Maxim Kruglov, expert at the Yabloko Anti-Corruption Policy Centre (district No 14), and architect Daria Besedina, independent candidate supported by Yabloko (district No 8).