Press Release, 12.07.2018

The Yabloko faction in the Karelian parliament voted against the government’s bill on raising the retirement age. However, most of the deputies of the Legislative Assembly of Karelia (24 votes against seven)  ​​supported the government’s bill. The Legislative Assembly also rejected Yabloko’s appeal to the State Duma deputies calling them not to support the pension reform at the federal level (21 vote against seven).

“The decision to raise the retirement age is nothing more than a rejection of those obligations of the social state that are envisaged by our Constitution,” said Emilia Slabunova, Yabloko party Chair and one of the authors of the appeal.

Emilia Slabunova also called on Karelian MPs to bear in mind that they are a representative authority, and their task is to represent the interests of their voters, not the government. Since 83 per cent of Russians oppose raising the retirement age, the parliamentarians should, “in accordance with the request of our citizens, not to support the increase in the retirement age and force both the government and the President to deal effectively with all the economic problems of the country,” Slabunova noted.

According to Andrei Rogalevich, head of the Yabloko faction in the Karelian parliament and one of the authors of the appeal, the government’s bill does not take into account the real situation.

“The average life expectancy of men in Karelia is 58 years. People simply will not live up to it [until retirement],” he said.

In their address, the Yabloko deputies also pointed out that it is still difficult for the elder people to find jobs, since there are no strategic retraining programmes in the country, production is automated, and low-skilled jobs are disappearing from the labour market.

According to Yabloko’s MPs, low interest of employers in older employees, their replacement by younger employees will lead to a significant increase in the number of unemployed elderly people who either do not have means of subsistence, or who are forced to work informally as “cheap labour”.

Earlier Yabloko’s appeal was supported by MPs from other factions: Irina Petelayeva, Viktor Stepanov and Alexander Fedichev from the Fair Russia faction, Tatyana Bogdanova, Yegeny Ulyanov and Valery Shottuyev from the Communist Party.

Yabloko’s regional MPs in other regions also criticised raising the retirement age. Thus, Boris Vishnevsky, Yabloko MP in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, made a speech in the St.Petersburg parliament calling MPs not to approve the bill. Lev Shlosberg, Yabloko MP in the Council of Deputies of the Pskov Region, spoke at a rally conducted by trade unions. And the Assembly of the Krasnokamsky District of the Perm Terriotry,  on the initiative of Olga Kolokolova, leader of the Perm Yabloko, unanimously decided not to support the pension reform.

The State Duma plans to consider the bill on raising the retirement age in the first reading on 19 July.  Yabloko is going to conduct protest actions in Moscow and St. Petersburg on the threashold the Duma meeting.