Press-release, May 17, 2013

On May 17 YABLOKO held the forth meeting with activists and candidates who will take part in the primaries for the Moscow City Duma elections in 2014, as the YABLOKO party provides half of the places on the party’s list of candidates to civil activists. As of today about 140 people registered on the YABLOKO’s website for the primaries and 30 out of them registered as candidates.

Galina Mikhaleva, First Deputy Chair of the Moscow branch of YABLOKO, and Mikhail Petrov, Secretary of the Regional Council, opened the meeting.

Different people came to the meeting including young IT-specialists and old age pensioners. However, all of them already have had an experience in different types of civil activities like coordination of action groups against road construction, in-fill construction, cutting of parks or working in election commissions and as election observers. Many of them participate in public hearings and collect residents’ signatures. Pavel Kudyukin, veteran of the democratic movement, a social-democrat, one of the University Solidarity trade union leaders, Alexander Sobranin, activist of White Ribbon movement, and Vadim Kozlovich, member of the presidium of the National Union of Textile Workers, and members of the Solidarity movement were among the candidates. The youngest participant of the primaries is 26 years old and the oldest is 72, most of the candidates belong to the 30-40 age group.

During the meeting Galina Mikhaleva and Mikhail Petrov told about the principles of formation of the united democratic civil opposition list of candidates and about YABLOKO’s experience in compiling such a list. In 2012 YABLOKO managed to form a united democratic list of candidates together with the Solidarity, the Democratic Choice and RPR-PARNAS for the Krasnodar Legislative Assembly elections.

The activists were interested in different issues: nomination of Gennady Gudkov as a single candidate from the opposition for the gubernatorial elections in the Moscow Region, YABLOKO’s ideology and details of the party’s programme.

The algorithm of primaries, joint protest actions and new forms of propaganda for the coming primaries and elections were discussed at the meeting. The participants of the meeting also agreed on the forms of cooperation and interaction, as well as on maintaining permanent contacts.

Galina Mikhaleva invited the participants of the meeting to join YABLOKO’s new project called “The Electronic Party” which represents an automatic system for working with party members, supporters and all who are interested in the YABLOKO’s activities.

Tatyana Ovcharenko, head of the YABLOKO ‘s School of Active Citizens dealing with protection of citizens’ rights in the housing and utilities sector, told about the school’s work and invited the participants to join its projects.

Activist Anton Kholodov made a presentation on “propaganda through provision of information”. He told about his experience of interaction with voters through cooperation with senior tenants and getting access to the front doors of all the apartments blocks in the electoral district. This makes it easy for a candidate to collect information about the residents’ problems.

At the end of the meeting the candidates were handed their candidates’ and voters’ IDs.

                                             Mikhail Petrov and Galina Mikhaleva

 Pavel Kudyukin

 Pavel Kudyukin

 Tatyana Ovcharenko

See also:

Moscow City Duma elections 2014