Attack of the Clones

The parties' claims to remove Yabloko from regional electoral lists coincide by 65%. And court decisions too

The “cleansing” of Yabloko’s regional lists for the upcoming elections continues: after the removal of the list in the Pskov region in court, the same claims were filed in the courts in Kaliningrad and Sverdlovsk. “Same” is not a figure of speech: both claims, although filed by different parties in different cities, are two-thirds the same textually. Both were considered on the same day, August 28. Both were satisfied (in Sverdlovsk, as locals write channels, Yabloko's rating has already reached 10%) according to the "fixed match" scheme described in Novaya Gazeta: a lawsuit is filed from a pro-government party, which is immediately accepted by the court, supported by the same electoral commission that registered the list, and supported by the prosecutor's office. This means that a command has been given - and from the federal level - to eliminate the line in the ballot "Peace, freedom, life without fear" in the regional elections. Just remove the line from the ballot. it is possible, but the desire of tens of millions of people to live according to this principle is impossible.

...In the Kaliningrad region, the lawsuit was filed in court by the “Communists of Russia”, and in the Sverdlovsk region - by the Liberal Democratic Party.

The claim of “Communists of Russia” is based on the same allegations that were used in the claim of “Rodina” when the federal list of the party was removed.

The “communists” accused Yabloko (and its Kaliningrad branch) of using social networks in their campaigning, access to which is prohibited or “slowed down” in Russia (even Telegram is mentioned), and that intellectual property legislation was allegedly violated during the campaigning (with references, among other things, to an interview with Grigory Yavlinsky).

In the LDPR’s lawsuit, these arguments are supplemented by one more (also borrowed from Rodina’s lawsuit) - that Yabloko allegedly used funds from the election fund “in excess of the legal limit” for campaigning.

It is pointless to analyze all this from a legal point of view - all these claims were crushed point by point in the Supreme Court.

There, Yabloko’s lawyers proved that campaigning on social networks by third parties not related to Yabloko cannot be “imputed” to the party as allegedly paid for outside the electoral fund. That third-party posts and videos about Yabloko cannot be equated with commercial advertising ordered by the party. And that no “intellectual property rights” were violated.

But all this did not have the slightest impact on the court, because it was not a legal, but a political problem that was being solved.

...As in the Supreme Court, these and other arguments were ignored by the court in Yekaterinburg, where representatives of Yabloko Yaroslav Shcherbakov, Konstantin Kiselev and Leonid Buiny said that it was necessary to consider separately the campaign of the federal Yabloko and the election campaign in the Sverdlovsk region.

That the plaintiff - LDPR - refers to articles of the law that are not grounds for removing the list, the actions of citizens supporting Yabloko are not the responsibility of the party, and the interview with Grigory Yavlinsky is not campaigning and there is not a word in it about the elections in the Sverdlovsk region.

And that the circumstances of the federal campaign cannot automatically serve as grounds for deregistration of the regional list.

Everything is in vain. But in court, the LDPR’s argument was heard that by calling for donations to the campaign and explaining how this could be done, the party “could mislead voters that Sberbank and Ozon Bank also support the Yabloko party (?!)...

“I have not seen a single legal argument from the administrative plaintiff. And I’m impressed by what my colleagues, the administrative defendants, did: thoroughly, on every point, with the provision of materials, absolutely everything was rejected,” says Kiselev, leader of the Yabloko list, and head of the party faction in the Yekaterinburg City Duma...

...In Kaliningrad, everything was repeated, while the representative of the “Communists of Russia” Maxim Makarov agreed in court to the point that Yabloko’s demand for peace (included in its program) was allegedly “extremism”. Representatives of the plaintiff constantly referred to the decision of the Supreme Court - although there is no case law in Russia, and the “Communists of Russia” did not participate in the process in the Supreme Court, and its practice cannot be applied on the principle of prejudice.

Yabloko representative, lawyer Roman Morozov, said in court that the plaintiff was allegedly reporting violations of the rules of campaigning on social networks blocked or prohibited in the Russian Federation - but the plaintiff himself could neither review nor identify these messages without using prohibited methods to view prohibited resources. In addition, the plaintiff did not provide any expert or expert opinions confirming the authenticity of the messages, which the lawsuit calls “propaganda.” Neither the email addresses of the publications nor the time of their publication are provided. And, in fact, according to Morozov, we are talking about restricting freedom of speech and censorship, and not protecting the rights of copyright holders and voters. On the contrary, voters lose the right to choose an alternative political party, which reduces political competition...

The leader of the “Russian Community” in Kaliningrad spoke on the side of the plaintiffs, saying that Grigory Yavlinsky’s interview “due to his political weight” became illegal propaganda and attracted new supporters to the Yabloko party from among undecided Russians. The prosecutor also said that many messages in support of Yabloko on social networks created a positive attitude towards the party and a negative attitude towards others.

This is, of course, a new word in electoral law, which does not indicate “political weight” among the signs of campaigning and does not call campaigning for which the party is responsible the fact that people who have no relation to the party speak well of it...

In response to the plaintiff’s statements about an alleged violation of copyright and the rights of copyright holders when Yavlinsky mentioned the phrase “let there always be sun” in an interview, Morozov (as in the Supreme Court) recalled that it was not Yavlinsky, but Nikita Vasilenko (the journalist who interviewed him) who uttered the phrase: “Let there always be sun, let there always be mother.” That this is not a quote from the work of Lev Oshanin, but the use of a commonly used phrase. In addition, Lev Oshanin is not the author of the phrase “let there always be sun, let there always be mother,” he himself confirmed this in an interview in 1985. But this had no effect on the court.

After the trial, Ivan Bolshakov, the head of the Yabloko Analytical Center and the leader of its list in Kaliningrad, called the decision another unfair act against the party, and said that “the elimination of the legal opportunity to influence political processes and defend one’s rights in court opens the way for radicals. “Everyone who makes such decisions today and participates in their implementation must be aware of their personal political responsibility for this.”

...In both cases with the courts, something else is noteworthy.

A comparison of claims filed by different parties and in different cities reveals, as Yabloko calculated, 63% of textual overlap.

Moreover, not only the standard procedural formulations coincide, but also the substantive part: in both claims, voluminous substantive paragraphs and the sequence of sentences coincide verbatim.

For example, both lawsuits describe the party's alleged use of restricted information resources in the same way:

“The scale of the identified activity excludes the possibility of assessing it as a technical error or an isolated episode. Tens of thousands of publications with a total multimillion-dollar coverage indicate the use of limited access information resources not sporadically, but as a sustainable way to achieve a campaign result.”

The “argumentation” about the publications of regional candidates also coincides verbatim:

“Consequently, we are not talking about the actions of outside users and not about the usual information about the activities of the party, but about the conscious use by candidates of the regional list of the same information resources with limited access to conduct their own election campaign.”

As has already been said, there is not a single piece of evidence of the “involvement” of the Yabloko party in these publications. But this did not stop the Supreme Court from accusing Yabloko of allegedly paying for it.

Recently, Channel One and Rossiya 24 spoke in great detail (and very complimentary) about the second stage of the United Russia congress and the adoption of its “people’s program.” The Central Election Commission or the Prosecutor General's Office did not try to calculate the cost of these broadcasts based on advertising rates and compare them with the maximum volume of the election fund. Why exactly?

Almost without changes, the claims for the removal of Yabloko's lists contain large fragments about the use of intellectual property, interviews with Grigory Yavlinsky, collection of donations and the connection of general party materials with regional election campaigns.

Here are more identical quotes:

“Thus, the campaign result of the general party material posted on the party’s official website was used as part of a single campaign to form a positive attitude towards the electoral association that nominated the regional list.”

Even the final wording is the same:

“Each of these grounds is independent, and the establishment of any of them entails the consequence provided by law in the form of cancellation of registration of the list of candidates.”

Legally, this is the same nonsense as what is stated above.

Expert Ivan Bolshakov says that

The identity of the claims indicates that the decision to remove Yabloko's lists from the elections was made by the federal authorities.

And that the true goal of the actions is the elimination of political opponents from the electoral process, disguised as a legal dispute between competitors. Why are spoiler parties used, created for one purpose: to help the authorities and eliminate the real opposition from the elections...

...On the same day, August 28, a trial began in Bashkortostan to remove Yabloko candidate Alexei Akimenko, the main opponent of the leader of Rodina (who systematically denounces Yabloko) Alexei Zhuravlev, from the State Duma elections in a single-mandate constituency. It’s impossible to leave him without gratitude for the service - and then a candidate from another pro-government party, A Just Russia, was found who filed the necessary lawsuit. The meeting will continue on August 31.

It is difficult to doubt that the “purge” of the only party advocating a ceasefire agreement and peace is taking place in an organized manner and on command: as has already been said, such coincidences do not happen.

And “Communists of Russia”, and the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, and the “Socialist Revolutionaries”, and “Rodina” are only performers of the roles assigned to them, and the customers are completely different people.

And it was the customers who made, as they cynically say in these cases, a “political decision.”

We often hear and read these words - which mean that a certain decision is first made outside the legal field, by an anonymous circle of people, and then takes the form of quasi-legal procedures. With the appearance of compliance with legal norms and the formal legality of what is happening, but which is only an imitation of the meaningful application of the law.

Unlike a “political” one, a legal decision must be based on clear and unambiguous criteria for acceptance, which are known in advance to all participants in legal relations. Behind-the-scenes agreements cannot be used to justify a legal decision.

In a rule-of-law state, a decision to withdraw from elections cannot be “political” - it must be legal, while respecting the independence of the institutions that participate in its adoption. Just as a decision to find a person guilty of a crime cannot be “political”. Only with this approach does society develop trust in the authorities.

But in a non-legal state, it is precisely a “political decision” that is made, which is then strictly implemented.

First, an answer to the task is formulated, and then the decisions of government bodies are adjusted to it.

In the cases described, what they formally try to present as a dispute between election participants is in fact only the execution of this “political decision.”

When election commissions, law enforcement agencies and courts act not as independent structures, but as executors of received instructions.

The current election campaign shows everyone: in today’s conditions, it is impossible to protect yourself from the execution of a “political decision”; it is impossible to protect your legal rights and interests. The remnants of the rule of law have been cast aside as unnecessary.

Yabloko's federal bureau appealed to voters, urging them not to believe rumors that the party had been removed from the elections altogether, and reminded that 126 single-mandate candidates continue to campaign in more than half of the country. And that in the regional elections there remain lists (neither in Pskov, nor in Kaliningrad, nor in Yekaterinburg, the decisions have entered into force and will be appealed) and candidates in districts from Yabloko.

Yabloko also stated that all other parties participating in the elections are part of the current government and support its course and the continuation of hostilities. They voted or approved the repressive laws under which Yabloko members Maxim Kruglov and Lev Shlosberg*, Mikhail Afanasyev, Vasily Neustroev and Vladimir Sorokin were convicted, and Konstantin Smirnov and Elena Perepelitsa are in pretrial detention.

“Voting for any of these parties is ethically unacceptable and politically wrong,” the appeal says. “A vote for any of these parties is a vote against the ceasefire and peace, a vote for the continuation of repression, bans and stirring up an atmosphere of fear.”

Vladimir Maksimov

* Included by the Russian authorities in the register of “foreign agents”.