Fight for hope

The Yabloko party, unlike other representatives of the liberal flank of the opposition, did not want to boycott the Duma elections, published a list of candidates. It is headed by former party leader Grigory Yavlinsky. The Party Congress approved his candidacy on the recommendation of the political committee and the bureau. One of the slogans of Yabloko’s election campaign is “We will restore your hope!”

The second number on the federal list is the current party leader Sergei Mitrokhin, the third is the head of the Green party faction Alexei Yablokov. According to Kommersant, the candidacy of former co-chairman of Right Cause Boris Titov was discussed as a third person on the federal list. On the eve of the Moscow City Duma elections, he negotiated with Yabloko to present a united front there, but did not succeed. The negotiations were not successful for him this time either: he explained to the newspaper that he and Yabloko did not see eye to eye: “the program they came up with is purely left-liberal, for them the main thing is humanitarian values ​​and super-institutional reforms,” but for Titov as a right-wing liberal, “the main thing is the economy and economic reforms.” After Mikhail Prokhorov joined Right Cause, Titov remained an ordinary member of the party.

Yavlinsky not only leads Yabloko to the State Duma, but also heads the list of party candidates for deputies of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, elections to which will be held simultaneously with the Duma. As the head of the St. Petersburg branch of the party, Maxim Reznik, told the newspaper, “if Yabloko does not get into the State Duma, but gets into our legislative assembly, Yavlinsky will become a deputy of St. Petersburg.”

So far, Yabloko, like the other party that did not make it into the previous Duma, Patriots of Russia, plans to get at least seven percent in the elections and thus create its own faction. If a party receives five or six percent, by law it has the right to receive one or two deputy mandates, which right it considers necessary to use.