Elections as stress for the authorities

The opinion of the representative of the "Democratic coalition"

The opinion of the representative of the "Democratic coalition"

The political space in Russia is extremely turbulent. The phrase “who would have thought two years ago…” has become a common cliché. But in fact, only the brilliant Sorokin, probably, could predict the war in Ukraine and the burning of cheese. And if so, there is little point in discussing the fall of 2016 too seriously. We can “bomb Voronezh”, introduce ration cards, return the death penalty, ban the wearing of separate swimsuits - yes, a week is enough for all of the above, let alone a year. Unfortunately, a year will still have time to change very much. (Unfortunately, because, no matter how much you want to be an optimist, the trend lately has been painfully unambiguous: if the change is for the worse.) Is it worth it to be generals who are preparing for the last war?

I have always been a supporter of building systems that are as flexible, horizontal, thinking, and adaptive as possible. This approach is shared by the entire team of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, the most effective political organization in the country. Not even being structured as a formal political force (we were never allowed to register the Progress Party), the FBK, of course, has the most annoying influence on the authorities and, to a large extent, forms the political agenda. Existing at the same time on microdonations and remaining a very compact, even small organization. Over the past year and a half, the same team, led by Alexei Navalny, has been making an analytical report on mega sawing at the Sochi Olympics; prepared and organized the "Spring" march (which, alas, became a funeral march in memory of Boris Nemtsov); led a wide-ranging public campaign for the ratification of Article 20 of the UN Convention against Corruption; collected and collected the signatures of 18,000 voters in Novosibirsk and Magadan. These are all very different types of activities: there is desk work, field work, the Internet, offline, analytics, and politics. And this example of mine shows that a small but well-organized group of people, united by a common idea, leadership and approach to work, is capable of a lot.

By implementing such projects, we simultaneously test the limits of the system's capabilities.

They change constantly (in the direction of narrowing, of course). The experiments in Novosibirsk and Magadan clearly showed that there were no more opportunities associated with elections. Even the authorities do not intend to engage in imitation of elections anymore. With our public campaign to collect signatures, we have provided clear and unequivocal evidence of a fact that many, even after the MGD-2014 campaign, still doubted - decisions on the admission / non-admission of candidates for elections are purely administrative. And there is no need for illusions: this applies equally to candidates who need to collect signatures, and to candidates who do not need to collect them. Yes, of course, there is no such convenient administrative method as the “FMS base” for candidates exempted from collecting signatures, but there are many others. For example, they can simply not be included in the lists of candidates - this is exactly what Yabloko did in the elections to the Moscow City Duma in 2014 with Konstantin Yankauskas, Olga Romanova and many other promising candidates, replacing them with “their own”, but obviously impassable.

Well, since the trend towards narrowing the field of opportunities is not going anywhere, we can definitely make one statement regarding the 2016 elections to the State Duma now. Unless there are some completely sudden, nullifying all forecasts of political changes, then the admission of all candidates and parties to these elections will be administrative. Parties whose admission is not agreed upon will not be admitted. For parties whose admission will be agreed, the lists of candidates will be filtered in such a way that only candidates approved by the Kremlin will be in potentially passing places. All the tools for implementing such a decision have been worked out and perfected (including in the regional elections this year). So why is there any reason to believe that the Kremlin will decide not to use them?

So what is a boycott, non-participation? No way. Even in the densely authoritarian regime of modern Russia, elections remain a point of great stress for the authorities. Look at it with their own eyes: they have everything, absolutely everything. All power, all money. And here they have to arrange some kind of costly and nervous show, during which they cannot win anything. No matter how the “elections” end, the Kremlin will not gain more power, money or anything else. That is why they have been canceling as many elections as they can in recent years, stretching out the intervals between them, and so on.

Elections are unpleasant for them, which means they are pleasant for us.

Indeed, elections are our democratic institution. Indeed, it happened more than once that major elections turned out to be a source of great stress for the authorities. Let's remember December 2011, let's remember the mayoral elections in Moscow-2013, and even now, in Novosibirsk, albeit on a much smaller scale, we managed to cause noticeable political damage to the Kremlin.

I am writing these lines from Novosibirsk, here the local political elites are buzzing like a disturbed hive. The political system in such a large region is very complex, far from all influential local financial-industrial groups had enough space within the framework of United Russia. As in any other large Russian region, all players wishing to participate in local politics invested in various party licenses: not only the "parliamentary" Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the Liberal Democratic Party, the SR were quoted, but also the formally "non-prestigious" Yabloko, Rodina, "Patriots of Russia". The richer financial-industrial groups grabbed a cooler license, but, I repeat, there wasn’t enough for everyone. And nothing, the political system of the region worked, because part of the consensus was "relatively fair" elections, during which everyone could get some seats in the regional parliament and some piece of lobbying opportunities in accordance with their investments. And here on you - all this flies into hell: the regional election commission, which was considered one of the best in the country, in front of everyone removes the list of "Parnassus" absolutely out of lawlessness. With "Homeland", by the way, at the same time.

“So, the rules of the game suddenly changed? There will be no more elections in the region, can anyone be removed? So, all investments burned down? Should everyone run to United Russia? But all the good seats are occupied there…” This is what is going on in the head of a major local oligarch, who traditionally had to have 2–3 of his deputies in the Legislative Assembly and 2–3 in the City Council in order to control some one important committee and decide which These are important questions for him. In short, by eliminating us from the elections with the grace of an elephant in a china shop, the presidential administration simultaneously broke the stable and established political system of the Novosibirsk region. And this is a good illustration of what can be done in an election without being represented on the ballot.

After all, it was like this in 2011: we weren’t on the ballot, but one spontaneous phrase, an impromptu phrase from a radio program — “Vote for any party, except crooks and thieves” — became a viral idea that brought down the entire United Russia campaign. The consequence of this phrase was the need for unprecedented mass falsifications, the consequence of this was the first spontaneous rally of deceived observers on Chistye Prudy on December 5, 2011, and only then Bolotnaya and Sakharov Avenue. Yes, the opposition was unable to use the political capital that fell overnight into the hands of the sky, it squandered it. But it didn’t collapse on its own, but as a result of the elections, even though we formally did not participate in them.

I summarize. Will there be an opportunity for parties or candidates not approved by the Kremlin to participate in the 2016 elections to the State Duma? No. Will our voters have the opportunity to vote for their candidate? No. Does this make it necessary to refuse to participate in elections? As shown above: no, by no means. But in what form this participation will be necessary, we now do not know and cannot predict. Much will be determined by the specific context of the socio-political situation in the spring and summer of 2016, and much will change along the way. The regime is stupid and unwieldy, there are bound to be places where we can strike. But only compact flexible structures that are not afraid of any work, capable of quickly regrouping on the go, can do this. Fly exactly where the huge Death Star has weak armor and fire one shot, but exactly in the right place.