The St. Petersburg Times, December 26, 2000
Greens To Fight CEC in Courts
By Galina Stolyarova
Russian environmentalists are crying foul at the rejection of a petition on
the issue of spent nuclear fuel, saying that the Central Electoral Committee
threw out signatures on the document for trivial technicalities.
The petition was raised in more than 60 regions across the country to try to
force a referendum on the import of spent nuclear fuel into Russia. Hopes of
a nationwide vote were dashed, however, when the CEC declared over 600,000
of the 2.5 million signatures environmentalists had gathered to be invalid.
Two million valid signatures - as well as favorable decisions from the
Constitutional Court and the president - are required to hold a referendum.
The environmentalists now plan to challenge the decision in court, in an
effort to have at least 126,000 signatures reinstated.
Signatories who gave their addresses with the wrong abbreviation - for
example, Leninsky Pr. - had their entries declared invalid because the
correct abbreviation should have been Leninsky Prosp., not Pr., according to
CEC rules.
And the petition's organizers say the CEC also rejected signatories from
villages on the grounds that the street wasn't even mentioned - for the
simple reason that some small villages only have one street that doesn't
have a name.
Last Thursday, the State Duma voted in favor of amending environmental law
to allow Russia to import spent nuclear fuel for reprocessing - which yields
plutonium, uranium, and huge quantities of waste water - and long- term
storage. Previously, the waste had to be sent back to its country of origin.
The referendum would have asked the population if it agreed with the
project, which the Nuclear Power Ministry claims would bring in $20 billion
over the next decade.
Polina Malysheva, a spokeswoman for Greenpeace Russia in Moscow, said on
Friday that environmentalists were hoping for a series of challenges to the
CEC and to local electoral committees in various regions.
Alexander Karpov of the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists, which
participated in the petition, said that 126,000 signatures would be enough
to set the referendum's wheels in motion again.
He added that only a few challenges may be necessary. "There are common
cases, and one victory in the courts could mean that we get back tens of
thousands of signatures," he said by telephone on Friday.
A CEC spokeswoman contacted for comment last week confirmed that signatures
had been rejected "owing to multiple inaccuracies."
"Those who signed and those who collected signatures ... failed to meet the
requirements of the existing law," said the spokeswoman, who would not
identify herself. "We don't make the laws, but we have to operate with the
law that already exists."
However, Dmitry Krasnyansky, deputy head of the St. Petersburg Electoral
Commission, said that CEC rules were highly subjective.
"In many cases, the decision on whether to accept or reject depends
primarily on the interpretation of the people validating signatures ... and
is based on opinions rather than on precise legal instructions."
"There are no criteria for distinguishing occasional misspellings or
mistakes from deliberate falsification."
"I'm surprised there haven't been any legal appeals yet," he added.
Karpov said that CEC rules denied people the right to express their views.
He mentioned two other examples: the homeless, who often have no passport,
and young people from outside St. Petersburg and Moscow who came to the
cities looking for work, but who are not registered to live there and thus
ineligible to sign a petition.
"These people are mentally healthy adults, and they should have the right to
participate in a popular vote," Karpov said. "This is more than just
bureaucracy - this is a violation of human rights."
The petition's organisers also faced problems convincing some people to give
out their passport details and addresses, because they feared falling victim
to some sort of scam.
Karpov said legal challenges would most likely come in the Chelyabinsk,
Voronezh, Vologda, Far East and Primorye regions, where a high number of
signatures was rejected.
Back to the Publications page
Back to the first page on Abolishing of Russian Environmental Agencies
Back to the If Everything OK With Forests In Russia page
| 
