Press Release, 21.09.2017

On 21 September, Grigory Yavlinsky, head of the Yabloko Federal Political Committee, whom the party intends to nominate for the 2018 presidential election, revealed the key messages of his election campaign at a press conference at the Interfax news agency. The press conference was also attended by deputy heads of Yabloko Nikolay Rybakov and Alexander Gnezdilov.

The leaders of Yabloko reiterated that the first stage of Grigory Yavlinsky’s campaign was held this summer and was called Time to Return Home. The party held an all-Russian collection of signatures in favour of Russia’s withdrawal from the war in Syria and allocation of funds spent on the military operation for Russia’s domestic social and economic development. The collection of signatures took place in 55 Russian cities, and Yabloko managed to enlist the support of 107,000 citizens. Yabloko is confident that half of Russian society shares this position, referring both to the experience of the campaign and the latest public opinion polls. Now, Time to Return Home will be transferred into an online mode: the party launched a special website where the collection of signatures continues. More information about the campaign Time to Return Home can be found here.

According to Yavlinsky, the party will present the main points of the economic and domestic policy programme within the second stage of the campaign.

One of the basic requirements of the programme is the return of direct elections of mayors, governors and senators. “We will conduct the same field campaign, and we will campaign for direct choices of mayors, governors and members of the Federation Council in offline mode,” Yavlinsky said also adding that the party considers this to be the most important topic of the domestic policy proceeding at least from the experience of Yabloko’s allies Galina Shirshina (the elected mayor of Petrozavodsk, suspended from office) and Yevgeny Roizman (the head of Yekaterinburg, who was not allowed to run in the gubernatorial elections by the authorities in the summer of 2017).

Speaking about the economic agenda, Yavlinsky emphasized the need for a radical change in priorities in the budgetary policy – a transfer from militarism and support of state corporations and bureaucracy to the knowledge-based economy and development of human capital, and increase of spending on education, healthcare, science and culture.

In addition, the party will insist on a more equitable distribution of taxes between the federal centre, Russian regions and municipalities: “We believe that a correct budget policy in our present economic situation should target a sharp increase in budget revenues and distribution of collected taxes in equal shares between the federal centre, the regions and local self-government bodies,” Yavlinsky stressed.

Yavlinsky also spoke about The Economic Manifesto of Yabloko envisaging reduction of the state’s participation in the economy. “The state behaves like a corporation,” Yavlinsky said. “The state has now a 70 per cent presence in the banking sector. This means that there is no banking system. They only need to return the Gosplan (the body responsible for economic planning in the Soviet plan-based economy)! ” the candidate for president noted ironically.

Yavlinsky also said that the key social and economic task should be the creation of a broad middle class of owners due to guarantees of the rights for every Russian citizen for his/her share in the national wealth. This can be ensued by Yavlinsky’s programme  of mass-scale transfer of land into the ownership of citizens for individual housing construction, aimed at securing of the most important economic assets – land and real estate – for the middle class.

“Our key task is a free person in Russia. This is a person who can, without fear, engage in creative work, tell what he thinks, do not sacrifice his/her individuality, resist servility, slavery, lack of culture, aggression and greed we see in abundance now,” Grigory Yavlinsky concluded.

The Yabloko party congress held in February 2016 adopted a decision on Grigory Yavlinsky participation in the presidential election (in March 2018). No Yabloko will have to collect at least 100,000 voters’ signatures so that to register its candidate in the election campaign. In should be noted that one region can not give more than 2.500 signatures.