MOSCOW, September 14. /ITAR-TASS/. Oksana Dmitriyeva, the leader of St. Petersburg’s branch of the A Just Russia party, has refused to recognize the results of the Sunday gubernatorial and the majority of municipal elections in St. Petersburg.
“These elections were not free, the secrecy of voting was not observed, there were no openness and people’s constitutional rights were violated,” she said in a statement posted on the official website of the party’s St. Petersburg branch. Thus, she claimed that employees of state-funded enterprises had been taken by buses to election commissions during early voting. More to it, on the day of voting, observers were expelled from a number of polling stations.
“All these episodes demonstrate that St. Petersburg’s polls were “elections without choice,” that these elections were a mass falsification. That is why A Just Russia does not recognize the results of the gubernatorial elections,” the statement said.
“As for municipal elections, with rare exceptions of a number of municipal formations, where all stages, from candidate nomination to ballot counting, took place in strict compliance with the law, we do not recognize the results of elections to municipal legislatures either,” she stressed.
In the meantime, the ruling United Russia party said it was too early to draw any conclusions about possible violations at St. Petersburg elections.
“If there are documents - we have a transparent control procedure in Russia - there will be checks and legal evaluations, and there should be no other approach,” Irina Yarovaya, the head of the security committee of the Russian State Duma lower parliament house, told journalists. “If any violations are exposed - and this is a general approach, which is not subject to changes - there will be a legal evaluation of such violations.”
She noted that there had been episodes “when tensions were fanned with no subsequent proof.” As concerns the voting in St. Petersburg, “there are no grounds for any conclusions,” she stressed. “I don’t think there is any specific situation in St. Petersburg, which might entail violations of the law.”
According to exit polls after the Sunday elections of St. Petersburg governor, acting governor Georgy Poltavchenko is winning 74.5% of votes. Apart from gubernatorial elections, as many as 107 municipal entities in the city elected their legislatures. Opposition parties claimed numerous violations at polling stations.