The Yabloko party held the XXII reporting and election congress
[ad_1]
The Yabloko party held its 22nd reporting and election congress over the weekend. Party members re-elected chairman Nikolai Rybakov for a second term and approved six of his deputies. Another important topic of the congress was the question of Yabloko’s participation in the launched presidential campaign, but no decisions have been made in this regard yet. The delegates only confirmed the party’s previous position, according to which the founder of Yabloko, Grigory Yavlinsky, can run for president if 10 million voters sign for it. So far, ten times fewer autographs have been collected.
The congress, organized in a “semi-closed” mode (without the media, but with the publication of a number of materials in Telegram), was held under the slogan “For Peace,” which flaunted above the presidium. The main task was the election of the chairman and governing bodies. According to the updated party charter, all Yabloko members could nominate candidates for leadership.
A total of 40 people from eight regional branches were nominated, but only nine of them agreed to run for leadership.
On November 24, the federal political committee heard all the applicants and, based on the results of a secret ballot, formed a shortlist of four people. It included the current chairman Nikolai Rybakov, the head of the Yabloko faction in the Moscow City Duma Maxim Kruglov, the deputy of the Veliky Novgorod City Duma Anna Cherepanova and the representative of the Volgograd branch Alexander Efimov. They all spoke at the congress and talked about how, in their opinion, the party should develop.
Alexander Efimov named participation in the State Duma elections in 2026 as one of his main goals. “To do this, we must change the language of our speech. People often don’t understand him,” he complained. According to Maxim Kruglov, “it is necessary to engage in politics, not charity and cultural events” and “publicly respond to the information agenda.” Nikolai Rybakov focused on the development of social networks in order to “break through the absolute information blockade.” And Anna Cherepanova considers it necessary to look for potential leaders in the regions and attract them to the party.
On the evening of December 9, delegates held a secret vote, according to the results of which Nikolai Rybakov was re-elected for a new four-year term with 55% of the votes.
Six of his deputies were also approved. To the current deputies, deputy of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly Boris Vishnevsky and leader of the Moscow Yabloko Sergei Ivanenko, four new ones were added – Maxim Kruglov and Anna Cherepanova, as well as the head of the Tula branch of the party Vladimir Dorokhov and Lev Shlosberg included in the register of foreign agents. Mr. Shlosberg is listed on the Yabloko website as the deputy head of the Pskov branch, but the organizers of the congress, without explaining the reasons, preferred to call him the “leader” of this regional cell. On December 10, delegates elected a new composition of the federal political committee and bureau, as well as a control and audit commission and party arbitration. Commenting on the results of the congress at a briefing on December 10, Grigory Yavlinsky emphasized that Yabloko is “the only Russian party” that has changed four chairmen (according to the charter, the same person cannot lead a party for more than two terms in a row). “It seems that Yabloko is setting a good example for the country of power turnover,” the politician concluded.
Another dominant topic of the congress was the presidential elections, Mr. Kruglov told Kommersant.
According to him, when discussing the reports, party members expressed their thoughts on this matter, gave assessments and recommendations, “but no decisions were made, and the party’s position does not change.” Let us recall that the founder of Yabloko previously promised to run for president if 10 million Russians signed in support of his candidacy. “So that people are not afraid to put these signatures, we collecting they are not “for peace and for freedom,” but for the nomination of our candidate Grigory Yavlinsky,” Mr. Yavlinsky explained during the congress.
This format saves the “peace agenda” from discrediting in the event that an emphatically “peacekeeping” candidate does not find widespread support during the elections, explained Grigory Yavlinsky, answering a question from Kommersant: “We want to collect the signatures of 10% of voters, that’s 10 about a million people, and this is already an indicative result: in this case, they won’t write to you 0.3%.”
So far, however, only about 1 million autographs have been collected, the party member admitted: “People are very afraid, because they need to indicate passport data.” “But this (collection of signatures.— “Kommersant”) a form of dialogue with people, a free dialogue,” he emphasized.
According to Maxim Kruglov, the process of collecting signatures “has virtually nothing to do with the party”: “Yabloko itself does not organize this matter. Yes, we have posters in our offices that you can leave a signature here, but we ourselves did not create petitions, we did not make calls, so this is truly a grassroots initiative: we proposed, and a number of citizens are doing this.”
The topic of a ceasefire in Ukraine was also heard in many speeches by the delegates. “The most common question I hear from citizens is: “When will this end?” And I answer: if it depended on me and my comrades, it would have ended tomorrow, but it wouldn’t have even begun,” said, for example, Boris Vishnevsky. “The main task in the presidential elections is to do everything possible to restore peace,” Nikolai Rybakov echoed him, expressing the hope of convincing citizens that it is possible to “return peace” through an expression of will in March 2024. “Neither world leaders, nor those who consider themselves world leaders, have ever uttered the phrase that there is nothing more important than human life,” Grigory Yavlinsky pointed out. “That a ceasefire is necessary, that it is necessary to stop killing people, and then negotiate as much as you like.”
“The more voices opposition politicians gather in their support, the louder and more weighty their voice will be, the more attentively the authorities should listen to this opinion,” comments the head of the Civil Society Development Foundation, Konstantin Kostin, on the Yabloko party’s intentions. Grigory Yavlinsky will have to formulate a “unique electoral proposal” that “will be distinguished by its novelty, consistency and meet the demands of significant social groups,” but now such a development of events seems to the expert “extremely doubtful” for a number of reasons. “The first is a very controversial novelty,” explains Mr. Kostin. “Yavlinsky has been in politics for too long, many are tired of him, and there are no results that can be presented to citizens. Second, collecting 10 million signatures requires a large, extensive and efficient infrastructure, but this is exactly what Yabloko does not have.” In addition, Mr. Yavlinsky “never in history has had so many supporters (he got his maximum result in the 1996 presidential elections, receiving 5.55 million votes.— “Kommersant”),” and “to assume that all those who disagree with the authorities will now put aside their affairs and differences and come out in orderly ranks to support Yabloko would be naive,” the political scientist summarizes: “Most likely, this is a PR move with a fairly obvious result.”
[ad_2]
Source link