Federal Ombudsman submitted a request to investigate the refusal to register candidates in the Elections held in Novosibirsk Region to CEC and Prosecutor General's Office

Ella Pamfilova has sent an official request to verify the legitimacy of the refusal to register the candidates in the Elections held in Novosibirsk region to the Central Election Commission (CEC) and the Prosecutor General's Office.

The Commissioner for Human Rights in Russia Ella Pamfilova has sent an official request to investigate the legitimacy of the refusal to register the candidates of PARNAS party and some other political associations in the Elections held in Novosibirsk region and other regions to the CEC (CEC) and the Prosecutor General's Office.

'Such a decision was grounded on the mistakes made by the respective authorities in charge of digitization of signatures, while matching the signatures with the outdated data of regional management system of MFS Russia, as well as on allegations that the data submitted by some of the candidates was incomplete. Dear Vladimir Yevgenevich, due to the above mentioned circumstances I would like to adress you in order to verify the legitimacy of the refusal to register the above mentioned associations', - the Ombudsman stated.

The Ombudsman believes that election commissions' ingnorance of such cases 'undermines people's trust in fair elections'. On 29 July, 'Kommersant' reported this.

On August 3, CEC posted on its website the Pamfilova's request. There is no information yet on the reaction of the Prosecutor General.

Elections to the city council of Novosibirsk and Novosibirsk region Legislative Assembly are scheduled for September 13. Moreover, the same day elections will be held in more than 480 municipal entities of the region.

We would like to remind that on July 27, Novosibirsk election commission rejected the signatures in support of PARNAS, based on the FMS data, which, as explained by the party members, was outdated.

The Democratic coalition led by the party PARNAS submitted 11682 signatures to the election commission, that were carefully selected out of 17 thousand collected signatures in order to avoid any reason for nit-picking. We identified and informed police about twenty 'toxic' persons who were collecting signatures and deliberately forged signatures. While verifying the signatures, the graphologist identified only 8 doubtful signatures. Moreover the commission identified 1495 invalid signatures (for example, wrong address or name). Lawyers have exacted the review and found out that based on the FMS data 313 signatures were invalidated. According to 'Novaya Gazeta', in the final working group PARNAS retrieved 153 signatures. The party was lacking 317 signatures to surpass the threshold.

The publication reveals that as a protest, Leonid Volkov, the leader of the party, refused to leave the office of Petukhov, the head of regional election commmission. 'We use legal means of political protest: we are at the premises of election commission, the candidates joined us', said the group representing PARNAS. Three persons - Leonid Volkov, as well as party candidates Egor Savin and Sergey Boyko – went on a hunger strike. Later they were joined by three more persons.

Meeting of the Novosibirsk election commission on the issues related to signatures submitted by PARNAS.

On July 30, PARNAS filed a complaint with the CEC. 'The complaint was registered', - informed TASS referring to the weblink of CEC press service. The complaint consists of 10 pages with additional 306 annex pages. The complaint must be considered on 7 August.

As the lawyer of the party election headquarters in Novosibirsk Ivan Zhdanov explained to TASS, in the complaint the party demands to validate the data indicated in the Federal Migration Service certificate that was a backround for invalidating the voters' signatures. 'We request to declare that the data indicated in the certificate issued by the Federal Migration Service does not correspond to reality and that our signatures cannot be invalidated on the basis of the Federal Migration Service certificate', - he said.

In Novosibirsk region, candidates of 7 out of 17 parties who had nominated candidates were registered. 'United Russia', the Communist Party, 'Just Russia', LDPR and 'Yabloko' that were exempted from collecting signatures, as well as the 'Patriots of Russia' and 'Civic Platform' could run for elections.

On June 29-30, in Moscow and Sudislavl (Kostroma region), citizens were protesting against the refusal to register the candidates in the elections scheduled for September 13.

Almost at the same time as in Novosibirsk, Perm krai election commission refused to register PARNAS list of candidates nominated in the election to the city council. The election commission referred to the absence of a candidate as the reason for refusal to register the list. The party also claimed that the election commission held some 'extra' grounds for the refusal: the commission 'did not notice' the necessary papers, the full set of documents. A day later, the list of PARNAS candidates in the election to Magadan regional duma was as well rejected. The party representatives filed a complaint against the decision of election commission, which invalidated the signatures in support of the party, as 'B' wrote.

On July 30, the regional Tatarstan affiliates of 'Yabloko', PARNAS and the Progress Party issued a statement on refusal to register the lists of candidates in the upcoming municipal elections scheduled for 13 September in the region. As 'Kommersant' reported, this is due to the fact that, according to the party members, 'in Tatarstan election results are rigged and the authorities do not react to the reported violations'.

Moreover, PARNAS posted on its website that in Izhevsk the party had withdrawn its party list from the election.

On July 31, the Democratic coalition announced that it was forced to abandon the idea to submit the signatures in support of the party list in the elections to the Legislative Assembly of Kaluga region. 'During the campaign we have collected more than 6,300 signatures (the threshold was 4000). However, we encountered an unprecedented special infiltration operation, incorporation of an organized group of persons tasked with forging signatures into our headquarters staff – as the identified 'toxic' persons in charge of collecting signatures in Novosibirsk', - it was announced in the statement.