The Moscow opposition is waiting for miracles – Newspaper Kommersant No. 225 (7426) of 05.12.
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City and municipal opposition deputies, as well as district activists of Moscow, discussed strategies that could be used during the Moscow mayoral elections scheduled for September 2023 at the site of the project to train mundeps “Deputy Academy”. One strategy is to consolidate various political forces and hold primaries to nominate a single candidate. The participants of the meeting acknowledged that it is pointless to talk about the victory of the opposition in the elections of the mayor of Moscow, but even in such conditions it is not worth neglecting the elections, since they can become a “time of miracles”.
Opening the conversation of the deputies, a participant in the “Deputy Academy” (a project to train district deputies supervised by a number of opposition mundeps of different convocations), political strategist Vitaliy Koirakh, announced his desire to create a discussion “Deputy Club” on the basis of the training center, which would allow mundeps to exchange experience and interact with each other. with a friend on different issues. The project has previously united opposition deputies and activists, but their number could increase, Mr. Koirakh noted. According to him, as a result of the autumn elections of district deputies in Moscow, out of 1.4 thousand mandates, 134 were received by people potentially suitable for the training center “in terms of values.” We are talking about elected self-nominees and representatives of parties, with the exception of United Russia, New People and the My Moscow association. The rest of the oppositionists (including deputies from the Liberal Democratic Party, whose mention caused a mixed reaction among those present) could well enter into a dialogue with the academy, but they do not want to do this, Vitaly Koirakh added. The main reason for this, according to him, is distrust of the opposition structure and differences in political views, although these differences are not fundamental for the exchange of experience, in his opinion.
The participants noted that the establishment of horizontal ties between deputies could be the starting point for the implementation of various initiatives, and further give impetus to consolidation to participate in the Moscow mayoral elections and even hold primaries to select a single candidate from the opposition. However, this idea did not find wide support. For example, Moscow City Duma deputy Mikhail Timonov (“A Just Russia – For Truth”) reminded the audience about the experience of the “popular primaries” in 2019, which were held in a number of metropolitan districts before the election of deputies to the Moscow City Duma. The organization of in-person voting then aroused the interest of the police, and the online format made it impossible to observe and verify the election results, the deputy added. However, he immediately noted that “any consolidation works in a plus.” Because of the competition, the primaries can be not so much a unifying factor as a dividing factor, Samson Sholademi, deputy of the Lefortovo district, warned. Their results cannot guarantee a consolidated vote: the winning candidate may not be supported by the supporters of the losers, Mr. Sholademi added.
The very idea of uniting the opposition raises a number of questions, Dmitry Gurevich, deputy of the Sosenskoye settlement, noted: “Firstly, it is not clear who to unite around. The first step in this work is still acquaintance and interaction, not association. If everything works out, some problems and tasks can be solved, then we can already talk about unification.” Vitaliy Koirakh, however, did not rule out that not a person, but an idea could become a unifying factor: for example, the idea of fair elections, publicity or competition.
Even realizing the impossibility of winning the election of the mayor of Moscow, the opposition should try to take part in them, I am sure the deputy of the Yakimanka district Vasily Dikarev (Yabloko). The electoral process can be used to your advantage – if, for example, you effectively solve district problems, Mikhail Timonov added: “The election of a mayor is a factor that increases the chances of passing district initiatives. This is a “time of miracles”, when the possibility of satisfying public initiatives increases, especially if you collect many signatures and many appeals.” In addition, elections for any politician are a platform for campaigning for an alternative agenda, the deputy added.
Moscow City Duma deputy may be expelled from the Communist Party
On Friday, the Communist Party’s primary organization in the metropolitan area of Nekrasovka issued a verbal warning to Moscow City Duma deputy Yevgeny Stupin for signing an anti-war letter and sending positive references to oppositionist Ilya Yashin, who is on the list of foreign agents and is on trial for spreading false information about the Russian army. Earlier, for the reasons listed above, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation recommended that a “principled personnel decision” be taken against Mr. Stupin, up to and including his expulsion from the party. Kommersant’s source in the Communist Party confirmed that some high-ranking communists do support a radical solution to this issue and do not rule out that it can be adopted by higher party bodies. Mr. Stupin himself considers the decision to issue a warning “unconditional support” from fellow party members, but he is not sure that the issue with his exclusion is closed: “The party bodies of the Stalingrad branch, the city committee of Moscow and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation can cancel the decision and expel me from the party, – the deputy confirmed. – They say that some new personal file has been opened on me. Allegedly, I do not fulfill any obligations to the party. There is no official information yet. Looking forward to the next review.”
It should be noted that Mr. Stupin often contradicts the decisions of the Communist Party faction in the Moscow City Duma and supports projects, initiatives and actions of the non-systemic opposition, in particular, he helps the “Deputy Academy” project. In the spring, the communist signed the letter “Communists and socialists against fratricidal war”, for which he had already received a reprimand from the party. In autumn, he wrote a testimonial in support of the former head of the Krasnoselsky district of Moscow, Ilya Yashin, who was arrested on charges of spreading fake news about the army. In particular, it says that Mr. Yashin, as a deputy, refused to use a company car with a driver, sending this resource to organize a social taxi project. Mr. Stupin later explained that “as a communist” he welcomes the voluntary renunciation “of unreasonable privileges for the benefit of those in need” and does not consider that writing such a characterization runs counter to the positions of the Communist Party.
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