Translated material
Celebration of Loyalty
The Kaliningrad branch of Right Cause was not allowed to be headed by real oppositionists
Last Saturday, a branch of the Right Cause party, a liberal Kremlin project, was re-established in the Kaliningrad region. This process had to be restarted after the leader of the local branch of the former “Union of Right Forces”, deputy of the regional Duma Solomon Ginzburg took the helm of the creation of the regional “Right Cause”, “promoting” the young disgraced head of one of the municipalities, Andrei Mironovich, to the post of chairman. Unexpectedly, their competition came from the main Kaliningrad power engineer (head of Yantarenergo and former vice-governor) Mikhail Tsikel, who declared his claims to leadership of the party cell. The legitimacy of each other's actions was questioned by both sides. In particular, the presidential embassy in the North-Western District came out in support of Mr. Tsikel. Mr. Ginzburg, protesting against government interference in personnel matters, promised to block the creation of Right Cause, excluding loyal members of the Union of Right Forces from this process. Party co-chairman Leonid Gozman had to deal with the conflict situation on the spot.For this purpose, he specially flew to Kaliningrad on September 17. Before him, another co-chairman, Georgy Bovt, announced his vision of a way out of the difficult situation. Speaking to local media, he explained that it was precisely because of his position that the federal leadership of the party could not decide what to do with the Kaliningrad branch. Two co-chairs (Boris Titov and Leonid Gozman) supported Mikhail Tsikel, who wished to lead the Kaliningrad “right-doers”, and Mr. Bovt himself was more sympathetic to Andrei Mironovich. Mr. Bovt did not see anything wrong with the fact that Right Cause, when deciding who should be at the head of its regional branch, consults with the authorities.
The situation seemed to remain in limbo. The further it went, the more confusing it became: Mr. Tsikel stated that he largely supported Governor Georgy Boos, Mr. Mironovich, on the contrary, proposed collecting signatures for the resignation of the head of the region, Mr. Ginzburg reflected on the topic of friendship with Mr. Tsikel , which, apparently, will melt away due to party intrigues. All these “fermentations” carefully thrown into the press managed to draw attention to the process of creating a branch of a party that was largely artificial and pre-oriented towards a compromise with the authorities. Many people really believed that the discussion was serious.
But after Leonid Gozman’s visit to Kaliningrad, passions subsided and everything somehow resolved itself. If earlier opponents made it clear that they would not talk in the same “field,” now they managed to forget about the claims literally in one day. Or rather, in one night. “Negotiations began on the evening of September 17 and lasted until late at night. They were so emotional that Leonid Yakovlevich got up from the table noisily several times. Four times our discussion reached a dead end. I even had to call Anatoly Chubais to discuss some of the nuances. But we agreed,” Mr. Ginzburg told Vremya Novostey.
As the deputy noted, “there are no more questions for Mikhail Aronovich (Tsikel - Ed. ).” Mr. Ginzburg is ready, together with his protégé Andrei Mironovich (by the way, after several years of “butting heads” with the regional government, he recently resigned from the post of municipal head) to join the political council of the local “Right Cause”.
The department was headed by Mikhail Tsikel. By a majority vote on September 19, he was elected chairman at the founding conference (there were many representatives of Yantarenergo and those who worked under Mr. Tsikel during his vice-government). For now, instead of Mr. Ginzburg and Mr. Mironovich, their representatives are on the political council. “But if the further work of the party shows that it is not pro-government, but truly independent, then in six months or even in a hundred days we can join it,” Mr. Ginzburg promised.
In turn, Mr. Tsikel said that he would not engage in “rabid criticism” of the authorities. “We need a normal dialogue - we need to be heard. Because today there is opposition in the regional Duma - tell me, who hears it? Nobody... I think this is because there is no consolidation among single-mandate deputies,” said Mr. Tsikel, apparently aspiring to be a politician capable of uniting the local opposition with an eye on the elections to the regional Duma in March 2011.