
I decided to go to these elections not in order to have the happiness to know Love Petrovna Slisk or take part in the work of the Patriotic Education Commission.
The State Duma in its current hunchback form will correct the grave.
I am going to the polls in order to give the opportunity to almost half a million Russian citizens (voters of the 201st district) to express their attitude to the farce, into which the authorities turned the parliament and the election procedure.
The current composition of the Duma and the mechanism of its work are such that it does not matter who exactly will become the four hundred and fifty deputy. Shenderovich, Govorukhin or circus dog - nothing will change in the work of this Duma. “United Russia”, representing hardly a fifth of the list of Russian voters, occupied three quarters of the parliament - and will be pressed on the buttons indicated from the Kremlin until the deadline.
This Duma will cost Russia dearly - in every sense of the word.
So that Russian voters can continue to prevent this democracy controlled from the Kremlin, the authorities canceled the elections in single -mandate districts, reducing the folk will to Veshnyakov’s “special -tsterithmetic” with predictable results.
The last single -mandate elections - perhaps the last chance of the people to remind the authorities about themselves with a civilized way.
These elections already have a plot. The voters of the 201th district were deprived of the right to vote for Khodorkovsky’s candidate, hastily planting him in jail (according to the latest polls of the Levada Center, more than a third of the voters of the 201st district were ready to make a choice in favor of the political prisoner).
My participation in the elections will not free this political prisoner, but I hope it will give people the opportunity to assess the policy of President Putin in the field of curtailing democratic freedoms.
Those who are used to the “melted cheese” on weekends, I want to reassure: I am not going to re -profiled into politicians. I ask this two -month marathon to be considered a public experiment of a free journalist in a not very free country.
So: a cage with my surname in the ballot for voting (if the Central Election Commission lets me into this cage) is not a vote “against all”, but “against them”.
Against those who decided that they can do everything and everything will get away with it.
It will do, but not forever.
In the meantime, as Seneca said: this cannot be changed, but this can be despised.
From timely and at the address of this slap in the face, the mood of voters - not only in Moscow - can change for the better. I hope that residents of the University District (without flattery, one of the most intellectual districts of Russia) have enough mind and taste not to miss such a moment.
For the future - come in handy ...