And here they are, the rivers!

The Governor of St. Petersburg, Valentina Matvienko, as is known, should become the Speaker of the Federation Council, and for this she will have to win some elections. And now information has appeared that on August 21, elections will be held in two municipalities of the city, Petrovsky Okrug and Krasnenkaya Rechka. Everything would be fine, but this information became publicly available only after the registration of candidates was completed. As Kommersant writes, registration in these municipalities ended on July 27, but the media reported only after that, and none of the representatives of local authorities and election commissions confirmed the information (the governor herself claims that “no one hid anything” and refers to newspapers that announced the upcoming elections earlier, but Kommersant did not find such newspapers). Thus, Matvienko managed to register in districts other than those that opposition representatives thought about. On July 1, the leader of the United Russia faction in the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, Vyacheslav Makarov, told reporters at an informal meeting that Matvienko would run for the municipality of the city of Lomonosov, and later added that also in the village of Aleksandrovskaya, and the city election commission confirmed that in these districts Elections are scheduled for September 4. Various representatives of the opposition had already registered as candidates there, and United Russia even imitated preparations for Matvienko’s election campaign. And here you go.

In the Petrovsky district, deputies allegedly resigned a week before Matvienko officially learned that she was being offered the seat of Speaker of the Federation Council. At the same time, the deputy of this district, Dmitry Ilkovsky, told Kommersant that last week the district council was working, and was not in a state of by-elections. The Krasnenkaya Rechka municipality told the newspaper last week that elections have not been announced there. At the same time, the local deputy Anton Bogatushkin said that last week he resigned (despite the fact that this does not fit into the time frame for calling elections). The newspaper adds that the Petrovsky District is personally supervised by the aforementioned Vyacheslav Makarov, and Krasnenkaya Rechka is personally supervised by the head of the legislative committee in the Legislative Assembly, Vitaly Milonov. Plus, the brother of the speaker of the St. Petersburg parliament, Vladimir Tyulpanov, is a deputy on the council of Krasnenkaya Rechka.

The representative of the St. Petersburg bureau of Yabloko, Boris Vishnevsky, openly called Matvienko a coward and announced a violation of the law and voting rights. Yabloko and A Just Russia are going to challenge the calling of the elections in court.

In addition, Yabloko leader Sergei Mitrokhin sent an appeal to President Dmitry Medvedev asking him to intervene in the situation. In an appeal quoted by Interfax, the head of the party states that “as a result, only candidates from United Russia and citizens, most likely playing the role of figureheads, were able to register for these elections.”

So far, it has come to the point that the city election commission has promised to check the legality of the situation with early elections and registration of candidates.