Grigory Yavlinsky’s web-site 5.09.2019

Muscovites are asking what to do on the voting day of 8 September, because almost all candidates independent of the authorities were not allowed to run for the Moscow City Duma?

1. Residents of 15 districts have a choice. Candidates from Yabloko are running in four single-mandate constituencies: Yevgeny Bunimovich in electoral district No.6, Sergei Mitrokhin in electoral district No. 43, Maxim Kruglov in electoral district No.14, and Daria Besedina in electoral district No.8.

Support them! They are very different – both by age, experience, and by field of activity – but they are all very decent, reliable and professional people. I guarantee that they will adequately represent your interests and you will never be ashamed of them.

2. In other electoral districts, you should vote only for those candidates whom you know and whom you trust.

3. Remember that all parliamentary parties, by their nature are virtually factions of United Russia, and there is no difference between the candidates from the Communist Party, LDPR, Just Russia, and the so-called “self-nominated” who hide their party affiliation and who are supported by the Mayor’s Office. All of them always and everywhere pursue Putin’s policy in the State Duma, in the same way they will pursue the same policy in the Moscow City Duma, plus that of the Mayor’s Office.

4. At the same time, one cannot vote for candidates of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, as well as for various other communists, because these are parties of devoted Stalinists. This is not a joke. Voting for communist candidates in Moscow means supporting political persecution. And so many people were already imprisoned this summer. This is a signal for the authorities – if Muscovites vote for the Communists, then people really support reprisals, presence of political prisoners, censorship and political repression.

5. If you have no one to vote for in your constituency, then having come to the polling station you can pick up the ballot or write the name of your unregistered candidate on it.

Source

Grigory Yavlinsky is Chairman of the Federal Political Committee of the Yabloko Party, Vice-President of Liberal International. Doctor of Economics, Professor of the National Research University “Higher School of Economics”.