The Bureau of the party has discussed the results of the election campaign

Press Release, 06.04.2018

The Federal Bureau of the Yabloko party has discussed the results of the presidential election campaign in Russia. The reports were made by party Chair Emilia Slabunova, Nikolai Rybakov, head of the United Electoral Headquarters and Deputy Chairman of the party, Ivan Bolshakov, political director of the campaign of Grigory Yavlinsky and others.

The text of the report, as well as the decision of the Bureau providing political assessment of the past campaign, will be published on the party’s website soon.

Grigory Yavlinsky, Yabloko’s candidate for presidency and Chairman of the Federal Political Committee of Yabloko, made one of the key speeches. Yavlinsky gave the same assessments to the presidential elections as, in particular, were provided in his article “The Election Was Won by an Overwhelming Minority”, published in Nezavisimaya Gazeta on 27 March.

“Everybody lost in this campaign: those who voted for Putin, those who did not vote, those who boycotted the election, and those who voted for the left or the right, and those who voted for us. We lost absolutely everything. Why? Because this procedure held in the form of a plebiscite left the whole system in absolute immunity,” Grigory Yavlinsky stressed.

Yavlinsky also added that there was no certainty that the official results of the vote corresponded to the real will of the citizens, since a large number of voters voted through the ballot processing complexes (KOIBs), which can be easily programmed for a desired result.

The leader of Yabloko urged the party to start preparing for the next presidential elections: “if there are elections, but that is still unknown”.

“Our party must work proceeding from the fact that there will be [elections], as our nature is such. We are focused on elections, on political competition. We have no other choice. We do not have a military wing, we do not have partisan detachments, we do nothing of the kind, therefore we must prepare for elections,” Yavlinsky said.

Yavlinsky also called on his party colleagues to look for “new faces” who could take part in the next presidential election. “I already let go of my beard, I do not know how to form a new face by any other way – all my personal possibilities are exhausted,” Yavlinsky said ironically. “Look for new faces, look for new candidates, prepare them, make a whole team of them, let them be five, let them all the time speak and act before the party and the public, I am ready to travel with them [to the regions], and present them.”

These words were misinterpreted by the news agencies covering the Bureau meeting, so in his closing speech Grigory Yavlinsky had to explain that he spoke only about the “exhaustion of his personal opportunities for growing a beard”, and he would like to compete with new candidates for the presidency.

It should be noted that the decision of the Bureau emphasised that bringing young blood to the party was among the top priorities of inner-party work.