There will be no Maidan in Moscow, but the election law needs to be changed
The threat of a liberal Maidan in Moscow is exaggerated, however, the protests revealed problems with electoral legislation that are relevant not only in the capital, but throughout Russia. The editor-in-chief of the publication Forum.Msk, Anatoly Baranov, writes about this in his author’s column.
...The action of liberals in Moscow ended, the Maidan did not work out, the forces of light and goodness in the person of the riot police and the 2nd special police regiment won and detained either one thousand one hundred or one thousand three hundred troublemakers. But questions remain...
Well, a dozen liberal candidates were not allowed to participate in the elections. What if they had allowed it? With 45 constituencies, the liberals could not even achieve a simple majority. And now it seems that some powerful force has risen...
And not only liberal candidates were removed from the elections (and they didn’t even think about removing other liberal candidates, like Yabloko’s Bunimovich and others from “Katz’s team”). For example, along with Yashin, his main opponent, the heroine of the “Russian Spring” Maria Koleda, was not allowed to participate in the elections. Member of the Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation Andrei Babushkin was removed.
And a natural question arises: is it even possible, according to the existing rules, to go to the polls through collecting signatures and not break anything? And everyone unanimously says: no, it’s impossible!
But we see that some are removed, while others have no questions. Although these questions were asked publicly, there were no answers, by the way, required by law.
The most blatant example is the candidate from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Ekaterina Engalycheva, that is, a candidate who does not need to collect signatures at all, writes regarding the “self-nominated” candidate Kirill Nikitin: “more than half of the signatures for his nomination were forged.”
And it must be recalled that someone came up with a “brilliant” idea - to admit all candidates from the party in power, including even the head of the Moscow branch of United Russia, Metelsky, as “self-nominated candidates.” They say that Muscovites will confirm the “mandate of trust” even before the elections, but Muscovites won’t confirm it!
Just try to collect 6 thousand signatures with notarization in a month, and in the middle of summer! Especially for candidates whose existence the capital’s voters know nothing about.
Well, who, tell me, can know such a patriot as the director of the Moscow State University Center for Tax Policy, partner of PwC in Russia? And this is precisely the candidate Nikitin, whom they decided to push into deputies for unknown merits.
However, some of his “merits” are voiced by candidate Engalycheva: the wife of the Pricewaterhouse partner is the first deputy minister in the Moscow government, and on duty interacts with such structures.
But the point here is not even a private conflict of interest, but the fact that not only ordinary candidates, but also candidates from the party in power were faced with the fact that it was impossible to actually collect signatures according to the existing rules. And, too, together with liberals, patriots and others, they began to “draw.”
Here attests Engalycheva:
“The first to be discovered was the signature of a member of the initiative group “Against construction on Michurinsky 30b” (#Michurinsky30b). The same one who has been waging an unequal struggle for more than a year against bureaucratic lawlessness, united with the Moscow construction mafia. All winter we were on duty around the clock, beating the doorsteps of bureaucrats, seeing their disregard for us, seeing how they protect the developer, drive paddy wagons for us, illegally detain us, consider the people to be cattle!
And is it really possible that any of us are now capable of signing for the mayoral candidate? Of course not!
We immediately contacted the person, he was shocked, of course he didn’t sign anything, his signature was forged! Writes a statement."
“Almost every page contains familiar people, activists from all our districts. We call people directly or the chairmen of houses and ask them to clarify whether so-and-so has signed up? And from everyone we hear the answer: “NO!”
“The signatures of FSB employees, and various managers, and even high officials were forged - everyone was indiscriminately entered into the signature sheets, putting squiggles instead of signatures!”
“And now, I and the State Duma deputies are receiving massive statements from people whose personal data is included in the sheets and have forged signatures, saying that they did not sign for Nikitin and did not provide their personal data. They all demand that an investigation be carried out, those responsible be identified and brought to justice!”
So where do all these statements go? As we understand it, add it to the trash can.
This is the reason for mass protest! It’s not that some liberals were not allowed in, but that the policy of double standards was clearly demonstrated, well, right according to the recipe of Generalissimo Franco: “All to friends, law to enemies!”
No Maidan is possible in Russia, this is a false threat. We simply do not have such mass nationalism as in Ukraine, and the Maidan there was precisely nationalist, and not at all liberal.
But the liberals are simply unable to organize a Maidan, no matter how hard they try to copy the Ukrainian slogans of 2014, which even in Kyiv are now sometimes embarrassed about.
But the threat of loss of trust in the authorities on the part of voters is real.
And this is not only connected with the Moscow elections. In Astrakhan, Oleg Shein, a left-wing trade unionist and long-time State Duma deputy from A Just Russia, was removed from the elections. And in Sevastopol, where there are no liberals on the surface at all, participants of the “Russian Spring” are protesting, also not allowed to participate in the elections.
Who then are the “friends of the authorities”? Pricewaterhouse partners?
Already the head of the Human Rights Council under the President, Mikhail Fedotov, having gone to a protest rally, said that the election law needs to be changed, because it, in fact, provokes people to break the law!
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Now the editors are aware.