Primaries - rehearsal of a split?

The democratic forces of Russia are again discussing the association. Disputes begin on the shore

Three -stage candidate

This week, politician Dmitry Gudkov publicly voiced the idea of ​​uniting the democratic forces of the country in general and Moscow in particular to nominate a single candidate for the immediate elections of the mayor of the capital on September 9. In addition to the very idea of ​​uniting, Gudkov proposed to resort to the procedure of general democratic primaries. This means that all parties plus influential personalities and opinion leaders who are close to the ideas of democracy should gather and finally find a person who can compete with Sergey Sobyanin.

The stage should be at least two, and possibly three, according to Gudkov. “One stage is when independent municipal deputies vote,” the politician explains the technology in a conversation with the “new”. - They are vitally interested in a strong candidate for the position of mayor. Plus, their opinion is fundamentally important to consider, since they are leaders in their areas, they have already gathered teams, they are behind protest activists and leaders. The second round is the vote of Muscovites, and we offer it to make offline. ” When the primaries to put forward a single opposition candidate go without dividing into stages, this gives the loopholes of the city hall to somehow influence the result: “They will bring 50 thousand people with Moscow passports to the vote and choose the weakest candidate,” the politician explains. The proposed system intervention will make the city hall useless.

The third stage in the absence of the final result in the first two is a certain round table, which will gather all the leaders of the opinions: Navalny, Yabloko, Khodorkovsky, etc. “And they will already choose the Moscow King Arthur.” The system has yet to be configured - it is only important that it arranges all interested parties. Otherwise, Swara will turn out, in which Gudkov himself does not really want to participate.

With support, everything is ambiguous. Gudkov’s idea was openly supported by the structures of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. “We also support the idea of ​​primaries as an instrument of honest competition between democratic candidates and any unification processes in the opposition democratic movement,” the Open Russia movement writes in the official statement, but immediately makes a clarification, which already put on Gudkov as a candidate for mayors of Moscow. Ilya Yashin, Chairman of the Council of Deputies of the Krasnoselsky District of Moscow, also confirmed his readiness for negotiations on primaries, but publicly expressed doubt about the effectiveness of the design proposed by his colleague. “I believe that if you carry out the primaries, then it is necessary to do it seriously, with full -fledged debate and with the mass involvement of voters. It is voters who must determine the unified candidate from the democratic opposition. All other “schemes” are profanity and an attempt to adjust the procedure for a particular policy. In this situation, it is worthwhile to honestly say: I will advance in any case, leave me alone with me with my primaries. Why fool people? " - writes Yashin on his Facebook.

Categorically against the primaries, the long -term chairman of the Moscow “Yabloko” Sergey Mitrokhin. “I believe that this idea is completely uncertainly,” he says “new”. -It has some kind of shade of charlatanism. When the primaries are offered at once between several parties, everyone will pull the blanket over himself, and it is impossible to do a procedure that would have arranged everyone. ” Mitrokhin considers the primaries of the democrats "dangerous", because in the end "only fragmentation will intensify, mutual accusations will begin." Moreover, the conduct of primaries can confuse voters: once voted-where else? Mitrokhin himself is not going to participate in such stories, but plans to run again to the mayor of Moscow. “Polittusovka, which discusses this, is, maybe Gudkov’s electorate. And my electorate is houses, courtyards, residents, Muscovites. This agenda [from primaries] is not at all interested, ”concludes Mitrokhin.

It is better, of course, to suffer

So far, the primary discussion of the primaries in the offline of Gudkov and his like -minded people want to spend on April 9. In theory, you need to hurry: it is very desirable to spend all the events before the beginning of June - then everyone will go on vacation. According to Gudkov, Ksenia Sobchak, Andrei Nechaev and a minimum of 73 municipal deputy (most likely, their number by the time the material release will increase).

Alexei Navalny also supported the idea of ​​primaries, but it is not entirely clear how exactly he will be involved in them: his story with the party “working name”, depending on its fate, can make certain adjustments to the participants of the primaries, and most importantly in their mood. Although supporters of Navalny - with reservations - do not intend to interfere with this process. “It seems very correct to us that candidates for any elections are nominated through competitive democratic procedures. We always “drowned” for this, starting from the elections to the coordination council of the opposition, ”says Leonid Volkov“ new ”. - The design proposed by Gudkov does not seem successful to me personally, because it is, in fact, another municipal filter. He also offers a scheme in which the “Council of Elders” will correct the result if people “incorrectly” vote. But in general, we are for the primaries, and if we still manage to agree on a normal format, then we will agitate everyone in these primaries to participate and support the winner. ”

The very idea, however, has many problems. Firstly, the reputation of the primaries as such in Russia turned out to be strongly spoiled after the story with the Parnassus party (their participation in the primaries is not obvious): Vyacheslav Maltsev won there, and in order to avoid reputation problems, in Parnas, in virtue of the results of Mikhail Kasyanov, the results of Mikhail Kasyanov had to put in spoke. However, Dmitry Gudkov believes that his three -stage primaries scheme will precisely avoid such problems. But this image can lead to fatal consequences even before any elections, according to political scientist Abbas Gallyamov. “The primaries in our conditions look not so much as an instrument of accounting for the opinion of an ordinary voter, but as a mechanism for the struggle of some party leaders against others. Opposition leaders should simply agree in closed mode and put forward a single candidate. The decision to conduct primaries will only confirm that they could not agree, ”he says.

Secondly, the democratic opposition has not yet been able to bring to the logical end a single idea in which the unification appeared. This is also due to the ambitions of personalities on the democratic flank - everyone wants to be the main one. It should be noted that supporters of different politicians have already begun to actively promote the idea that everyone went to the elections himself: Gudkov - from the Party of Sobchak, Mitrokhin - from Yabloko, and Yashin - a self -nominee. But if you choose between these options, then the primaries, of course, is better, says political scientist Dmitry Oreshkin. “There must be one candidate to consolidate resources around him. Another question is whether it will succeed. In any case, you have to choose between two failed ideas: unpredictable and potentially conflict primaries or a refusal to participate in the campaign. If there are no primaries, then Gudkov, Navalny and Yashin can simultaneously declare the participation in the elections, and then nothing shines. In this situation, an attempt to suffer is more productive, ”Oreshkin is sadly ironic.

But the most important problem is the need even after agreements within like -minded people to break through the “municipal filter”, that is, to enroll in the consent of other deputies, among which United Russia has a total majority. “This is a comedy,” the political scientist Gleb Pavlovsky grunts. - A single candidate from the so -called opposition will then go to United Russia to ask him to be passed through a municipal filter. Two real problems: the development of a Moscow strategy, which today has no one but Sobyanin, and the absence of a person who can manage the capital in the opposition environment. It is better to concentrate the opposition on the development of the Moscow Management Program. ” While this will not, to observe the opposition’s movements “uninteresting”, summarizes Pavlovsky.

One, of course, does not interfere with one, and the primaries could be carried out in parallel with the development of a pressure strategy for the current Moscow authorities. Moreover, political scientist Alexander Morozov proposes, for example, to create a “mass movement of a“ politically loyal ”(that is, not anti -Putin) pressure directly on Sobyanin in the elections.” But the same Dmitry Gudkov believes that the primaries and the performance of a united front in the person of the candidate chosen by the entire opposition - this is already pressure on Sobyanin. True, there is a feeling that pressure is so far all that the opposition has as a summons for the nearest elections.