Who sat through the reaction

About the failure of the "voters' strike", which was inevitable. Invitation to discussion

“Now the authorities will be able to do everything,” supporters of the “voter strike” lament online, seeing the overwhelming superiority of the Kremlin in the presidential election. I would like to answer them: didn’t you help the authorities in this by staying at home?

For three months in a row, politicians, analysts and experts explained what the boycott of elections, pathetically called a “strike”, would lead to: an increase in the percentage of votes for Vladimir Putin and a decrease in the percentage of votes for opposition candidates.

We explained that if the election results show that support for the opposition is negligible, this will mean that there is no need to take into account the opinion of opposition voters, because "they are not here" - they did not come to the polls.

This means that the authorities will not only be able to continue their policy, but will also have every opportunity to toughen it up. Those who disagree with this policy can prevent this in only one way: to come to the polls and show that there are many of them.

In response, Navalny stated that "mathematics does not make sense." He and his supporters began to assure: since "there are no elections, all the results are drawn," the main thing is to break the plans of the authorities, who, they say, desperately need a turnout. To act in spite of what the government calls for. Here, they say, now “we will show them empty sites”, and “everyone will see that Putin is illegitimate.”

Together with terrible force, as they say, they put pressure on morality, convincing that voting for the opposition is “complicity in a crime”, and staying at home is a highly moral act, practically a civic feat.

No "empty polling stations" were "showed" to anyone, but some of the democratic voters remained at home.

For various reasons: laziness, disbelief that it is possible to influence something, disgust for what is happening and annoying agitation of the authorities for participation in the elections. Including - as a result of calls for a "strike" that filled the information space.

The result is known - an overwhelming "interest for stability", a high turnout of Putin's voters and negligible support for the opposition at the polling stations.

What do the organizers and supporters of the "strike" say to this, lamenting that the coming years will have to be spent with "inadequate and thieves'" authorities, with the same policy - and perhaps with a much worse one?

Do they admit that the idea of ​​a "strike" was wrong? That they did not calculate the consequences (of which they were warned a hundred times)? Nothing like this.

Navalny continues to assure that “we got our way”, that “35 million people refused to take part in the shameful elections” and that he “knows for sure that most of them acted in solidarity for ideological reasons”, trying to write down the majority of those who did not join their support group . This is cunning: Navalny does not provide any evidence of what he “knows for sure” about.

Then the song is performed: “Oh, what good fellows we are, that we didn’t participate in this and didn’t get dirty,” accompanied by insults and ridicule against the other presidential candidates. “Fake candidates and programs”, “miserable debates”, “Yavlinsky and Sobchak have no electorate - that's why they were allowed to vote,” Aleksey Anatolyevich flirts.

Well, yes, do not get dirty. But they participated very much - by their absence in the elections they raised the percentage of votes for Putin and lowered the percentage of votes for democratic candidates. And now, without blinking an eye, they reproach these candidates for low results.

Moreover, the low results as proof of the insignificance of the opposition candidates are reiterated by those who until recently assured that there was no need to go to the polls, because the results would “draw”. But if the results are drawn, they have nothing to do with the candidates. And if the results are real, then the elections were not a "farce" and they had to go. Where is the logic?

There is one logic, however.

It has been talked about for a long time: Navalny's main (although not publicly announced, but now become visible) goal in these elections was the most severe defeat of democratic candidates.

First of all, Yavlinsky, whom some of Navalny's supporters are persecuting so fiercely that they seem to hate him much more than Putin.

For what? Yes, to be left alone on the “cleared” democratic field.

A couple of days ago, Alexei Venediktov openly spoke about this as an achievement of Navalny. Nothing that Putin received an overwhelming advantage - but the competitors lost devastatingly.

The pay for this "achievement" was not long in coming. Literally the next day.

• On March 19, in St. Petersburg, on the territory of the former Farforovsky cemetery (where residents and opposition deputies oppose the construction of blockade burials), equipment for driving piles appeared.

• In Petrozavodsk, the prosecutor requested 9 years in prison for the head of the Karelian "Memorial" Yuri Dmitriev.

• In Moscow, the court demanded that Pavel Durov provide encryption codes for Telegram, and Roskomnadzor threatened to block him.

• In Yekaterinburg, the governor proposes to abolish the direct election of the mayor of the city, who is now Evgeny Roizman.

And I think that this is only the beginning of a new wave of reaction.

The past cannot be changed - the elections are over.

We must at least not repeat the mistakes made in the future.

P.S.

Editorial

By publishing the opinion of columnist Boris Vishnevsky, the editors are counting on the discussion of the topic by politicians, experts and just concerned citizens.