Everyone will leave, but I will remain

The founders of the "Civil Platform" left the party, expressing no confidence in its chairman Shaikhutdinov

The meetings of the political (FPK) and civil (FGK) committees of the Civic Platform, held on Friday, ended with a split in the party. Its chairman, Rifat Shaikhutdinov, was removed from office by a majority of votes, and the founder of the party, Mikhail Prokhorov, announced that he was leaving the Civic Platform and proposed to liquidate it in principle. Most members of the FPK and FGK followed the example of Prokhorov - as a result, only two members remained on both committees: Shaikhutdinov and Sergei Militsky. Together they re-elected Shaikhutdinov as the chairman of the political committee and the party.

The future of the "Civil Platform" will now be determined by the Congress - according to the Charter, only it can decide on the liquidation of the party. When it will be convened, the press service of the "Civil Platform" Novaya found it difficult to answer. Apparently, the date will be known at the party conference scheduled for March 24th. If the Congress decides to retain the party, the governing bodies will actually have to be created anew.

And today's meeting of the FPC began with a vote on the issue of the chairman of the federal political committee - since May 2014, this post has been occupied by Rifat Shaikhutdinov, who replaced Mikhail Prokhorov. Six members of the FPK voted in favor of his removal from office, two against.

After that, already at a meeting of the civil committee, the founder of the Civic Platform, Mikhail Prokhorov, spoke - he announced his withdrawal from the party, and also proposed to liquidate it or, at least, change its name. According to the businessman, the recent participation of the Civic Platform column in the Anti-Maidan, as well as the proposal to expel Andrei Makarevich, discredits the party.

Most of the members of the political and civil committees supported Prokhorov - after him, the businessman's sister Irina Prokhorova, artist Leonid Yarmolnik, musician Andrei Makarevich, journalists Alexander Lyubimov and Stanislav Kucher, lawyer Mikhail Barshchevsky, head of the Fair Help Charitable Foundation Elizaveta Glinka and other.

After seeing off their former colleagues, Shaikhutdinov and Militsky, who remained together in the FPK and FGK, held another meeting of the political committee. Rifat Shaikhutdinov was re-elected in two positions at once - the chairman of the committee and its secretary. He has already promised that at the conference on March 24 he will discuss the political prospects of the party, which are very vague.

The composition of the party, Shaikhutdinov promised in a comment to TASS, will be expanded in the coming month. Who exactly he intends to invite, Shaikhutdinov did not explain - he only noted that he was not going to call either the leader of the Night Wolves, Surgeon (one of the ideologists of Anti-Maidan), or Alexei Navalny.

According to a member of the federal council of the party Alexander Lyubimov , a split is observed not only in the central apparatus - a similar picture is allegedly in most regional branches. Thus, Yury Rydnik, head of the St. Petersburg branch of Platforma, has already announced his withdrawal from the party due to disagreement with Shaikhutdinov's course .

At the same time, Lyubimov does not rule out that the founders of the Civic Platform may create a new social movement: when it will appear and what it will look like is still unclear.

“The format is unknown, it depends on the political situation,” Lyubimov explained. “We want healthy competition, not a struggle for power by any means. If no one hears you, if they imprison you and turn on the mechanisms of pressure, as soon as you start doing something, how can you fight for power? But we don’t want to be a spoiler party and follow someone’s instructions - what’s the point?

The collapse of the "Civil Platform" was predicted by many experts even before today's congress. Political scientist Igor Bunin calls this the "logical end" of the party.

“As a real political project, the Civic Platform no longer exists,” Bunin told Novaya Gazeta. - The party consisted of two incompatible elements. These are people close to Prokhorov - Pugacheva, Makarevich and so on: secular, European-oriented - the systemic opposition of the liberal-democratic persuasion. And those who began to form around Shaikhutdinov. Prokhorov left him the party, being sure of his loyalty. And then Ukraine happened, and Shaikhutdinov, as a political strategist, decided to stick to the general wave. A gap formed - ethical, ideological and aesthetic.

The crisis that erupted after the Anti-Maidan had been brewing for a long time - after the departure of Irina Prokhorova from the post of head of the civil committee and, in fact, the leader of the party in October 2014. Then she explained her departure by her personal position on Crimea, which is at odds with the position of the chairmen of most regional branches.

The point of no return was a public scandal over the participation of the Civic Platform in the Anti-Maidan procession. The chairman of the party was then accused of hypocrisy. The liberal positions that the party has so far adhered to were weakly consistent with the radical chauvinist slogans of the “anti-Maidanists”. In addition, the “anti-Maidanists” branded Andrey Makarevich, the frontman and member of the political committee of the party, as the “organizer of the Maidan”, which caused a stormy internal party investigation at the highest level.

Mikhail Prokhorov, standing up for Makarevich, condemned Shaikhutdinov's decision to go to the march and accused the latter of retreating from the course of the party, "which was supported by millions of its supporters."