Blog post by Yaroslav Shcherbakov, 6.09.2024

Photo: Placard “Alexei Teksler: to protect and help! / Photo by Yaroslav Shcherbakov

Five years ago, Alexei Teksler defined people as a priority in his election programme. Today, his programme has other priorities: “First. Everything for Victory!”

Meanwhile, the main strategic goals for the development of the Chelyabinsk Region remain the growth of the population and well-being of people, life expectancy and quality of life:- the population of the region has decreased by 100,000 residents over five years. According to the forecast, we will continue to lose up to 20,000 residents annually in the next five years;
– the well-being of the population seems to have increased, however, for some reason, one can now buy 400 kg of bread with the increased per capita income per month, and in 2018 it was 49 kg more;

– life expectancy has decreased due to the pandemic and we returned to the previous indicators of 72 years only in 2023. The cost of the pandemic in our region is about 15,000 people who died directly or indirectly due to its consequences;

– the new surgical building of the Chelyabinsk Regional Children’s Clinical Hospital, declared in the media as an achievement [of the Governor], is being built not thanks to, but in spite of the actions of the authorities, who were unable to establish a dialogue with citizens, tried to illegally build it in the Chelyabinsk forest and sabotaged the court decision for a long time;

– huge amounts of money are spent on increasing the comfort and cleanliness of the urban environment, and it is convenient to compare the growth with zero. But everything ends with the “facade” part, here and there worn-out utility networks break out, the cleaning of the Miass River has been failed, and due to the reduction in the number of equipment, cleaning of territories and waste removal is poorly done.

I ran as a candidate for Governor to offer peace, freedom and sound changes to the South Urals. But the authorities do not need an alternative and competition, so I was not allowed to participate in the elections. Trying to overcome the “municipal filter” [mandatory collection of municipal deputies’ signatures in favour of the candidate registration] for registration, I talked to many deputies and heard from them how signatures were collected centrally for the current Governor and his chosen opponents.

What to do in such conditions at the elections without a choice on 7-8 September – my colleagues from the Chelyabinsk Yabloko and I proposed in a statement.

Yaroslav Shcherbakov
is a member of the Federal Bureau of Yabloko,
Chairman of the Chelyabinsk branch of Yabloko.
Lawyer