Novosibirsk activists were able to launch a referendum on the return of direct mayoral elections

On the third attempt, the Election Commission of the Novosibirsk Region registered an initiative group to hold a referendum on the restoration of direct elections of heads of municipalities in the region. Now the Regional Legislative Assembly will have to assess the legality of the issue submitted to the plebiscite, and the activists themselves will have to collect almost 22,000 signatures in support of it. However, the chances that the referendum will still take place are small, the expert believes.

Another application for registration of the initiative group was considered by the election commission at a meeting on June 5. Previously, she twice rejected the documents, citing errors: on May 5, she had complaints about the composition of the participants, and on May 17, about the discrepancy between the data provided by them and the database of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. “Colleagues, this was the third attempt. Indeed, the documents are properly drawn up,” Olga Blago, chairman of the commission, stated on Monday.

Recall that the direct elections of mayors in most municipalities of the Novosibirsk region were canceled back in 2015, and in February 2023, the Legislative Assembly did away with the remaining exceptions by that time – elections in Novosibirsk and the science city of Koltsovo. On April 26, the city council of the regional center made appropriate changes to the charter of the municipality.

As Kommersant reported, plans to hold a regional referendum on the return of direct elections were announced back in March by an independent deputy of the City Council, Anton Kartavin. The first meeting of the initiative group of 20 people took place on April 23, and the next day the regional electoral commission received its application for registration. The referendum question was formulated as follows: “Do you support the need to adopt a regulatory legal act … which introduces the following changes …:“ The head of the municipality of the Novosibirsk Region, endowed with the status of a municipal district, municipal district or urban district, is elected only in municipal elections on the basis of universal equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot?”

Blago explained that within 15 days the commission’s decision will be sent to the legislature, after which the regional parliament must check the issue for compliance with federal law. If successful, the initiative group will start collecting signatures, which will also be verified by the election commission for authenticity. And only after that the commission will set a date for the plebiscite.

According to the regional law on a referendum, its initiators need to collect signatures of 1% of voters in the region within 30 days. As of January 1, 2023, there were 2.17 million voters in the region. Thus, the initiative group will have to collect 21.7 thousand signatures. “Now we will communicate with volunteers, train them to collect. We have already signed up more than a hundred in all areas, ”Anton Kartavin told Kommersant. According to him, the initiative group has sent letters asking for support to all municipal deputies of the region and has already received about 60 positive responses.

However, over the past decade in the Novosibirsk region there have been a number of attempts to hold a referendum (on the abolition of major repairs, on the allocation of free land plots, on the construction of a toll road bridge across the Ob, on the election of heads of municipalities in direct elections and the recall of the mayor), but none of them were not successful.

Igor Ukraintsev, a political scientist and city council deputy from Novosibirsk, believes that this time the will will not be expressed even if the regional parliament considers the wording of the question legal, and the activists collect the required number of signatures, the commission will surely find new shortcomings. “In signatures (to be collected in support of the referendum.— “b”) there will definitely be some shortcomings, inaccuracies, errors in passport data that will allow the initiative to be deployed even at this stage, ”he said.

Valery Lavsky, Novosibirsk