Sergei Mitrokhin’s blog, 01.09.2015

The activists of our party are gradually getting annoyed with the campaign of lies which has been started against us by the representatives of PARNAS, the Progress Party and the coalition founded by them together.

1. The lies of Navalny

The Kostroma branch of YABLOKO were the first to run out of patience. Last week they demanded Navalny to apologize for his statement.

ATTENTION, the LIE:

“The local branch of YABLOKO was bought by an oligarch who has just left United Russia. YABLOKO’s whole campaign will be devoted to lashing out at us with the money of this oligarch”.

Navalny neither apologized nor represented any proof of the “buying up”. Therefore head of the Kostroma branch of YABLOKO Valentina Yamshchikova filed a suit against Navalny to defend the reputation of the party.

ATTENTION, the TRUTH:

Vladimir Mikhailov left United Russia in the end of 2011 on policial grounds. He is financing the campaign only in the electoral district where he is running as a candidate. The campaign of YABLOKO list is financed by the party. The information can be easily checked by any party’s appeal, including PARNAS, to Kostroma Election Commission.

And what kind of an oligarch, in fact a businessman, being of sound mind and memory, who is shaping his business with the help of the authorites will confront United Russia? That’s why I invited Mikhailov to join our list, he is a unique representative of that very non-oligarchic business in Russia, the fair business for which YABLOKO struggles.

Mikhailov who left United Russia on political grounds makes a real difference from Navalny’s partner Kasyanov who didn’t willingly leave Putin’s team but was thrown out and later became an opposition member. With his statement Mikhailov admitted that Putin’s policy is a mistake but Kasyanov calls the epoch of “early Putin” (when he mopped up NTV and imprisoned Khodorkovsky) “the progressive reforms”. So, apart from lying Navalny also has double standards.

As for “lashing out at us”, as you can see the things are vice versa: it is the coalition who can’t leave YABLOKO alone with their “crackdown”.

2. The lies of Volkov

They particularly can’t calm down because of the situation in Kostroma and the figure of Mikhailov as well.

This is what Volkov stated on air of the Ekho Moskvi radio station on August 25:

ATTENTION, the LIE:

“Mikhailov made an agreement with Yerin and took YABLOKO’s franchising, we are really of good opinion of him, he truly is a person with good reputation, but this is pure political technology which allows Mikhailov to run as candidate without signature collection in the electoral district where the residents really like and respect him. YABLOKO is one of the parties whose candidates don’t have to collect signatures [to be registered].

So, he is holding the campaign in his electoral district”. He repurchased YABLOKO’s license from a local Volodin [Vechyaslav Volodin is Deputy head of Presidential Administration] to be registered in his electoral district. Since he has bad relations with the governor he was afraid of being removed from the elections if he decided to collect signatures.

On the whole, as a federal subject, YABLOKO plays the role of a department in the Presidential Administration, at the same time many nice and respectable people are members of this party. The same thing for the regional level, though they have such respectable people as Lev Shlosberg, in this particular case YABLOKO plays the role of the gubernatorial administration department, they solve the task of electing a good person and successful businessman Vladimir Mikhailov.

ATTENTION, the TRUTH:

Imagine the “department” of [Presidential] Administration disapproving of the annexation of Crimea. When in Novosibirsk I told Volkov about this contradiction within his anti-YABLOKO propaganda. This is what I said:

“Our stance on Crimea is a lot more known and clear than the one of the coalition”. He couldn’t object to it. And who is the “department” then?

We eliminated the ex Chair of the Kostroma branch of YABLOKO Novosyelov for betraying this stance. We suspected that it was him who had relations with the Administration.

If we also lied we would write that Volkov and Navalny are the department of the Administration for softening the protest actions agenda and removing them from the centre of Moscow to the Maryino district [outskirts of Moscow]. And Kasyanov and Yashin robbed Ryzhkov’s “franchising” [Vladimir Ryzhkov, the founder of the RPR, allowed Boris Nemtsov and Mikhail Kasyanov’s PARNAS join his party. In 2014 Ryzhkov had to leave RPR-PARNAS because he disapproved of the support for nationalist Navalny on behalf of Nemtsov and Kasyanov. In 2015 Kasyanov suggested renaming RPR-PARNAS into PARNAS]. That would sound more realistic. But we don’t go down to such dirt even answering to their lies.

But there is little logic in Volkov’s lies as well. Have a look at his “logic”. Mikhailov made an agreement with “a local Volodin” – Yerin, “repurchased” his franchising, the license, but at the same time he is “a good person”. So, what is “good” about this? But Mikhailov is really a good person because he didn’t do all these things. And Volkov lied. But in a clumsy way, he said an obvious stupidity. If Mikhailov has bad relations with the governor, how can the governor’s clerk “sell him a license”? Either the governor is a dork or the clerk is a monster. No, the thing is that Volkov is a liar.

Of course he didn’t provide any proof of his conspiracy theory.

It was me who invited Mikailov to join our list. Yerin has nothing to do with this.
ATTENTION, the LIE:

Volkov on air of Radio Liberty:

“YABLOKO is just one of the department of the Presidential Administration, they are not allowed to join any of our coalitions”

ATTENTION, the TRUTH:

As for the mean “department”, please see above. Now about the coalitions. Yesterday I returned from Voronezh. The second on the list runs Sypryonok, member of PARNAS, the third is Khodakovsky from the Democratic Choice party. The Progress Party member Malakhovsky is also on the list. There are also coalitions in the other regions of Russia.

In Udmurtia we struggled a lot to nominate Timofey Klabukov, the Progress Party member, in the single-mandate district. I personally went to the Minister for International Affairs together with Klabukov to dispute the lawlessness of the police. Navalny didn’t even find time to retweet Klabukov’s massage on being removed from elections.

Member of the Central Election Commission and our party member Elena Dubrovina really tried hard to achieve the registration of PARNAS in the Kostroma region. It was her who was ordered to sort out whether the signatures collected by PARNAS were authentic. And she won, as we know.

That’s how we “are not allowed to join any coalitions”.

We do not join your coalitions not because it is forbidden but because you are lying all the time.

3. The lies of Yashin

Where there are liars there are little liars.

The first person on the list saved by YABLOKO remembers Moscow City Duma elections on Radio Liberty, August 6:

“YABLOKO is the only democratic party, conditionally opposition, which was freed from signature collection. Tens of opposition candidates came to YABLOKO with a request to nominate them in the single-mandate districts.

ATTENTION, the LIE:

“Nearly everyone was refused. Katz was refused, the owner of Dozhd TV channel Vinokurov, Olga Romanova, [Maria] Gaidar. It’s obvious that I didn’t go there, I was eliminated from YABLOKO”.

ATTENTION, the TRUTH:

Actually, we proposed Katz to run in the other electoral district since another YABLOKO candidate was running in Katz’s favorite district. He refused. Gaidar and Romonaova also received the opportunity to choose from other districts, not those they wanted. Galyamina which is also an opposition candidate agreed to run in the district she was given and no problem occurred. Vinokurov agreed to run in the district which we proposed but then he found out that he could not support the candidates who compete with YABLOKO in the other districts. That’s why he refused. But nobody had any pretensions to YABLOKO. Nobody but Yashin who even wasn’t there.

ATTENTION, the LIE:

Yashin: “Milov was refused though Milov supported Yavlinsky at the presidential elections , he was the only opposition leader who supported Yavlinsky during the presidential elections. Everyone was refused.”

ATTENTION, the TRUTH:

Milov refused himself when he learned that he had to sign the Memorandum where the annexation of Crimea is judged. His colleague from the Democratic Choice party Peskov sign the Memorandum and had no problems with nomination as a YABLOKO candidate. It’s about “everyone was refused”.

Epilogue

A large number of YABLOKO supporters persuaded me that I shouldn’t react to all these lies. They reminded me of this proverb: don’t compete with a pig, both will end up in dirt but the pig enjoys it.

I don’t agree. The lies must be revealed in any case no matter who tells them. Even if they are the most popular and glamorous representatives of the opposition.

If you don’t compete with the pig who is attacking you, it will come to your house covered with dirt, sit down to your table and put its legs on the table.