Grigory Yavlinsky sent a letter to the Head of the Central
Electoral Commissionabout the situation surrounding his
promotional video clip for the electoral campaign Presidential
candidate and leader of Yabloko, Grigory Yavlinsky, filed
a request to the Head of the Central Electoral Commission
Alexander Veshnyakov, to urgently review the situation on
the ORT channel concerning his promotional video clip for
the electoral campaign. In the letter Grigory Yavlinsky
wrote that “under the agreement to grant paid broadcasting
time on the basis of a draw, the aforementioned video clip
should have been broadcast on March 20.
” However, according to Grigory Yavlinsky, the ORT channel
“represented by its Director for Administrative and Legal
Issues, M. Martirosova said that broadcasting of this clip
was “unreasonable”. According to the leader of Yabloko,
this constitutes a violation of the “agreement and present
law”. Grigory Yavlinsky also noted that his election campaign
clip “warns about the danger posed to the country in the
event of the development of a totalitarian regime”. According
to Yavlinsky, the leadership of ORT noted that “the video
clip makes association between the electorate of the RF
and prisoners…; whereas the indicated group represents only
part of the electorate”.
In addition Yavlinsky said that, according to ORT, “the
words of one of the participants of the clip about law-enforcement
officers may be treated as actions covered by an article
of the Criminal Code envisaging liability for lack of respect
to representatives of the state authorities”. The Yabloko
leader stated that “there is no such an article in the Criminal
Code”. In addition, in his opinion, “the words that are
probably being considered cannot in any way be regarded
as a violation of law.” In his letter to Alexander Veshnyakov,
Grigory Yavlinsky pointed out that he assesses the refusal
to broadcast this video clip as “a manifestation of censorship”
and violation of his right to publicise his electoral campaign.
The Yabloko leader asked the Central Electoral Commission
to urgently consider this problem at their meeting. Based
on Interfax reports.
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