However, is ready to negotiate with RPR-PARNAS in single-mandate constituencies

By Viktor Khamrayev, Kommersant, 2.06.2015

The YABLOKO party will run independently in the upcoming regional elections, however, it may nominate any nonpartisan candidates recognizing YABLOKO’s coalition principles to run on behalf of YABLOKO. This was announced by party leader Sergei Mitrokhin, who also added that YABLOKO was ready for consultations with the RPR-PARNAS party so that to jointly nominate candidates in single-mandate constituencies.

YABLOKO has finally made a decision that the party will run independently at the elections to the regional legislative assemblies, that should be held on September 11. “We will nominate lists of candidates in all the regions where we have our regional branches, ” YABLOKO leader Sergei Mitrokhin told to Kommersant. There will be no YABLOKO candidates list, for example, in the parliamentary elections in the Magadan region. In general, the party intends to participate in 20 election campaigns so that its candidates could pass into regional parliaments and city councils of regional centres.

In some regions, such as Novosibirsk, Kaluga and Kostroma regions, YABLOKO lists of candidates will compete with nominees from the “democratic coalition” which develops around the RPR-PARNAS party and Alexei Navalny. Since last year’s single day of voting YABLOKO has been forming its own “coalition of the political alternative”. The two coalitions have not displayed any interest to form a union limiting [cooperation] to reciprocal invitations: representatives of the “democratic coalition” invited YABLOKO to join them, and vice versa. The invitations were usually transmitted through the media. Also through the media exchanged the parties their polite refusals.

However, Sergei Mitrokhin told Kommersant that YABLOKO was ready for consultations with the RPR-PARNAS so that “to agree on the candidates in single-mandate districts” [in the regions] where elections are held by the majority or the mixed system. YABLOKO is ready to include in the list of nonpartisan candidates from local activists and public figures well known in region, where seats in the parliament are contested by the party as a whole (the proportional system). At present YABLOKO has a faction in the Legislative Assembly is St. Petersburg, headed by Grigory Yavlinsky, the founder of the party, a faction in the Legislative Assembly of the Republic of Karelia and Lev Shlossberg, leader of the Pskov branch of YABLOKO, represents the party in the Legislative Assembly of the Pskov region.

St.Petersburg YABLOKO will begin preparations for the elections with a new leader, as another election of the leader of the regional branch were held in St.Petersburg YABLOKO on May 24, the results of which were declared invalid last time due to a technical error. Mikhail Amosov, Associate Professor of St. Petersburg State University, succeeded in this post businessman Andrei Palevich. Mr. Amosov promises to intensify the work of the party in the streets focusing on purely YABLOKO events.

“It is a normal practice or for election campaigns for democrats to agree on candidates in single-mandate constituencies,” Boris Makarenko, the head of the Center for Political Technologies, said to Kommersant. However, the expert expressed his concern that Russian “democrats” could have “lost the skills of fighting” in the years of their being the non-system opposition”. According to Mr. Makarenko this was demonstrated by the last year’s elections to the Moscow City Duma, when YABLOKO and the Civic Platform could have succeeded in getting at least one mandate per party if they had “agreed on dividing the constituencies [between the parties]”. In the end, neither of the parties got representation in the Moscow Parliament.

The issue of “nominating lists of candidates in the same region is more complicated,” Mr. Makarenko noted. In his opinion, both YABLOKO and RPR-PARNASS are doing all they can so that to raise their ranking in a year before the federal election, which, according to the data of all the public opinion services, remains within the ​​statistical error (below 3 per cent). “But if it turns out that one of the parties has the real potential in some region so that to overcome the five per cent threashold and get mandates, the other party have to remove its list,” the expert noted.