March 4 marks the date when the people will vote in Russia:
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin plans to assume the Russian
Presidency for the third time. Unlike the first two times,
however, his support is melting on this occasion. A demand
for change is building in the country. More and more people
are no longer prepared to put up with the lies, corruption,
abuses and falsification in the elections.
It is impossible to call what we are witnessing at present
free and fair elections. There are no independent courts,
while the authorities control all national TV channels. At
the same time we can see the administrative pressure on the
mass media and the abuses of electoral commissions the official
voting results have little in common with the actual expression
of will of the electorate.
Political competition on 4 March has been reduced to simulation
each of the registered opposition candidates to the President
embodies a specific segment of the political system created
by Putin. The only candidate, who represented a democratic
alternative to the system Grigory Yavlinsky, who was nominated
by Yabloko was not allowed to run in the elections on the
pretext of casuistic chicanery over the quality of the signatures
gathered in his support.
According to the opinion polls, approximately one-third of
the participants in the mass protest actions held over the
past few weeks in Russia voted in the parliamentary elections
for Yabloko and had intended to vote for Yavlinsky in the
presidential elections. There can be no doubt that the removal
from the elections of the democratic candidate capable of
uniting the votes of the discontented was not a legal judgment,
but rather a political decision.
Last weekend Yabloko held a congress to discuss voting tactics
on 4 March and the strategy for our next actions.
Yabloko called on the party's supporters to turn up at ballot
stations and express their protest by symbolically voting
against all, thereby rendering their voting slip invalids
(the slip does not include the choice against all).
On 4 March tens of thousands of public monitors will work
at the ballot stations, including over 30,000 from Yabloko.
This time we don't have our own candidate on the voting slip,
but we will fight falsification on 4 March and at all subsequent
elections, in order to return Russia step by step to free
and fair elections and through peaceful means engineer political
reforms and regime change, and transform Russia into a modern
democratic European country. A country where the law is the
same for everyone, where the courts are independent, private
property is sacrosanct, where the state protects every single
individual, and does not suppress the rights and freedoms
of its citizens.
The journey we face will be hard: we know that the people
running Russia will not give up power voluntarily. We will
have to assert and regain our rights inch by inch and establish
at the forthcoming regional and local elections new authorities
that rely on the real expression of will of the citizens
starting in the cities where society already feels its strength
and then throughout the country. Yabloko will establish public
committees that will responsible for the discussion of political
reforms, will fight for the abolition of censorship of the
mass media and for the creation of public television. Yabloko
will interact with all democratic public and political associations,
so that by acting together we can radically change the current
political system in Russia through peaceful means.
Through public discussion, dialog and a round table with the
authorities we will achieve our long-term goal the preparation
of a Constituent Assembly aimed at restoring the legitimacy
of the Russian authorities, which was interrupted by the Bolshevik
coup detat in 1917 and the dissolution of the Constituent
Assembly in 1918.
4 March is only the start on this journey.
Alexander Shishlov is YABLOKO Bureau member
See also:
The
original publication at the ELDR web-site
Presidential
Elections 2012
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