Press release, 27.01.2018

Presidential candidate Grigory Yavlinsky made a speech at the meeting of residents of the Borisovskoye village, the Mozhaisk district, the Moscow Region. The residents are protesting against the merger of several rural and town settlements.

The law on establishing the new city district was passed by the Moscow Region Duma. As a result the settlements will lose the status of municipalities an the powers of local self-government will be terminated. The law was adopted without notice of the local residents in defiance of the Constitution and the European Charter of Local Self-Government.

The meeting of the local residents was conducted as part of an extended session of the local council. Yabloko has no representation in the council but the party leaders and deputies in other districts actively support their colleagues’ protest. Therefore they invited Grigory Yavlinsky to make a speech at the meeting.

“The government’s policy deprives the citizens of their rights to organise their lives with the taxes that they pay. This leads to poverty. When some bureaucrats, who do not care about people, are given the power to make decisions concerning our lives, this leads to the situation when people give up and become indifferent to their activity. The connection between the lack of rights and poverty is one of the major problems of Russia’s economy. It is not possible to build a strong economy when people are deprived of their rights. People must have rights. We need freedom and law to enable economic growth,” Yavlinsky said.

He promised that Yabloko will appeal to courts of all levels to defend the rights of the Mozhaisk district residents.

Yabloko’s municipal deputies Nikolai Dizhur, Sergei Kryzhov, Andrei Malygin, Antonina Stetsenko, Lubov Kopach and Chair of the Moscow Region branch of Yabloko Alexander Gunko also addressed the local residents. They said that the reduction of local self-government in rural settlements leads to the situation when the authorities neglect the interests of people living there.