December 19, 2019, 00:50 / Opinions

Who does the mayor of Moscow want to talk to?

If the authorities are not ready to talk about the case with deputies, the street may again demand an answer

The report of Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin to the Moscow City Duma of the new convocation once again showed the reluctance of the executive branch to conduct substantive discussions with the opposition, which has expanded its representation, through both bureaucratic tricks and unsubstantial answers.

On Wednesday, Sobyanin presented a report on the activities of the city government over the past year to the Moscow City Duma. “Smart” – that is, protest – voting in the last elections to the city parliament led to a significant change in its composition. A significant expansion of opposition representation made the Moscow City Duma a less comfortable space for city authorities and suggested more uncomfortable questions for the mayor.

This was evident earlier during the discussion of the capital's budget: its first reading at the end of October lasted more than 10 hours, and 17 deputies voted against it (3 in the previous convocation). The executive branch and deputies loyal to it, realizing that the Moscow City Duma, after a long break, had become a place for discussion, were preparing to reduce the intensity of the discussion of the mayor’s report. The commission for organizing the work of the City Duma in advance limited the number of questions from the faction to three and did not agree on the question from Yabloko about whether the mayor feels responsible for the persecution of participants in the summer protests, deputy Daria Besedina noted the day before. The questions agreed upon in advance allowed the mayor's office to prepare not so much substantive, but rather rhetorical answers, allowing them to “shave off” the opponent without speaking on the substance of the problem.

No mayor, no war

Opinions / Editorial

When Elena Yanchuk, a deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, asked why during the renovation it is planned to build much taller houses than were promised, which leads to overpopulation of the areas, Sobyanin replied that the average number of floors does not exceed the planned figure of 14 floors (in fact, this means the arithmetic average from houses of different heights). He explained the demolition of the Nightingale cinema center by the possibility of a repetition of the Winter Cherry tragedy and the repertoire consisting of Western blockbusters (which is not true). When asked about the conflicts surrounding plans to dispose of Moscow's garbage, the mayor, not without irritation, replied that he was “amused” by the protests against incinerators and landfills, and suggested that garbage should not be removed from yards where residents are opposed to landfills. And when Besedina asked, despite the microphone being turned off, a “forbidden” question about the protests, the mayor said that the provocateurs who “drove people” into the center of Moscow to “storm the city hall” were to blame for what had happened.

Such methods and answers are quite in the spirit of the top officials of the state, who talk about buying weapons at Voentorg and call accusations of corruption “nonsense and compote.” Perhaps they think it's witty. However, the reluctance to answer substantive questions from the deputies representing Muscovites may again force citizens to take to the streets demanding that the mayor’s office speak out on the merits.