The Court of the Kaluga Region turned down YABLOKO’s claim
regarding registration of the party in the election campaign
to the regional parliament.
The experts of the regional electoral commission announced
600 signatures out of total 8,452 collected in support of
YABLOKO’s list invalid (at permissible number of defective
signatures amounting to 400). YABLOKO managed to prove in
court that the signatures were valid only in 77 cases, however,
to get registered the party had to obtain such a decision
on 201 signatures.
YABLOKO’s activist and deputy of the Kaluga regional parliament
Sergei Fadeyev who participated in the trial on behalf of
YABLOKO, said that the electoral commission “had lied and
mixed everything up wherever possible”.
YABLOKO’s activists gave their reasoning for annulment
of the decision not to register YABLOKO’s list, however,
the court did not consider them “worthy of consideration”.
For example, over 100 signatures were considered invalid
as the collectors of signatures allegedly had not signed
under the corrections made in the lists. However, YABLOKO’s
collectors had signed all the lists with corrections.
In some cases the arguments of the electoral commission
in recognizing signatures void were even more surprising.
Thus, in the list below the electoral commission could not
“determine” the year of birth (the photo below shows that
it is clearly 1977).
In the photo below the electoral commission failed to see
what was the number of the flat (the photo shows distinct
figure 60).
The judge did not take into account that in violation of
the law YABLOKO had not been informed of the time and place
of the check of signatures. The representatives of the electoral
commission stated that they had notified YABLOKO in oral
form, however, this statement contradicted to witnesses’
statements that the commission had promised to notify YABLOKO
of the date of the check.
Moreover, the law envisages that information on all the
checks and as well as all the documents should be handed
to representatives of the parties at least two days prior
to the electoral commission meeting. YABLOKO was notified
of the date and time of the check on the same day, three
hours prior to the check.
In violation of the law, the electoral commission refused
to give documents to YABLOKO’s representatives at its meeting.
Moreover there were multiple errors in the terms and even
dates in the documents issued by the electoral commission.
YABLOKO is going to appeal the present decision of the
court in the Supreme Court of the RF.
See also:
Regional
Elections 2010
