Alexei Navalny presents his platform for the 2013 Moscow mayoral election at the congress of RPR–PARNAS.

[applause]

Thank you very much to Mikhail and Boris for the warm

words. True, Boris started to build things up a little

by talking about criminal cases,

first this, then that, meetings, and so on.

I was expecting someone in the hall to say, well, maybe

we shouldn’t get involved with him. I was already

told today: once people get involved with you, it’s nothing but

problems from

you. I understand that some of you are probably

already a little tired of me. First of all,

of course I would like

to thank all of you for finding the opportunity

to gather here today and hold

the general meeting, the federal political council,

and the Moscow political council, which supported

my movement. And of course I want

to thank, overall, the People’s Freedom Party,

the PARNAS party, which in these

very difficult political conditions,

when we supposedly have freedom

to register political parties, but in practice

the reality is that truly

independent parties such as the People’s

Alliance or the December 5 Party are not

registered. Under these conditions, PARNAS

remains the only

registered and independent party

that is ready to provide its

political infrastructure to those

who genuinely want to engage

in politics in order to make people’s lives

better, rather than engage in

political manipulation or petty bargaining with

the authorities. Thank you, friends.

[applause]

Thank you very much. I want to ask for your support

for my nomination for mayor of the city

of Moscow, the city where we live, the city

that we love, and the city that has, unfortunately,

become a symbol of the complete

absence of power for its residents. In Moscow,

10% of the country’s population lives here, and you could say

there is arguably not a single other locality

in the country where residents

would have even

less power. In Moscow, the number of deputies in the Moscow City Duma is laughably

small, and

each deputy is elected by a number of voters

comparable, in fact, to those who vote

for the mayor of a fairly large, even very

large, city in this country. In Moscow,

district deputies have the

fewest powers and practically do not

resolve any issues at all related

to the budget. In Moscow, even the most basic unfulfilled

requirements for holding local or

citywide referendums remain unmet. Power in the city

of Moscow does not belong to its residents. Power in

Moscow belongs to appointees

of the federal nomenklatura (state bureaucracy), appointed by

construction and various other oligarchs, and by

the United Russia party, whose real name

Boris Nemtsov has already mentioned today.

And despite the fact that United Russia in

Moscow is despised and hated by everyone, and even

their own candidate is embarrassed by them

to the point of disguising himself

as an independent candidate, United Russia has sunk its claws into

Moscow with a death grip and does not want to

let go. I am entering this election in order

to pull our city out of the clutches

of Mr. Putin,

Mr. Sobyanin, and the United

Russia party. I am entering this election to return

power to the people and return power

to Muscovites. If you support me,

in my platform and speeches I will

speak about what Boris already said today:

that our city is very rich.

Moscow’s budget is

larger than Paris’s with a comparable population, but

when we look around the world, we

understand that Moscow still lags somewhat

behind the city of Paris. I will speak about

new ideas for the development of our city, about how

we must build and plan it not

for 5 years, not for 15, and not even for 25. We must not

set ourselves the goal

the executive branch must not set itself the task

of cramming in a new shopping center somewhere,

making a little money on it, while forgetting

that our children and

our grandchildren will forever lose

that urban space simply so that

we can build, here and now,

another shopping mall like Yevropeysky. I will

speak about real, proper

city planning based on calculations and urban planning

science for Moscow.

It must completely rule out situations where

some functionary with only three years of

education in the Presidential Property Management Department

simply informs Muscovites

that, you know, I have decided

the parliamentary center will be here, and tomorrow

I decide it will be there, or we have decided

that half the city center should be blocked off with fences impassable to

Muscovites

because that is more convenient for the Federal Protective

Service. We must demand

a new master plan and high-quality development

for our city for decades ahead. I

will propose solutions to the problems of

healthcare, on which we are now

spending truly fantastic sums and

getting no

budget funding per Muscovite

for healthcare is four times higher than

the Russian average, but for that money we do not

receive absolutely nothing. In countries

that spend on healthcare

as much as Moscow does, life expectancy

is 10 years higher

than in Moscow. In Moscow, we cannot treat

even basic illnesses. When people

face truly serious

problems such as

If you support me, I will offer truly

high-quality solutions to transportation

problems, based on a scientific approach and

modern experience in the development of major

cities, rather than what the

Moscow mayor's office is doing now, which has already been recognized as

outdated and misguided back in the

1970s in

major cities.

Right now, the colossal sums of money

that we spend on Moscow's transportation system

benefit only the contractors

who are building in Moscow the most expensive

roads in the world, the most expensive in the world

interchanges, the most expensive tunnels in the world. Here,

the people dealing with the city's transportation problems

are people who have absolutely no

understanding whatsoever of

public transport or urban planning.

These are builders who still live in the

mindset of the builders of the Moscow Canal

for whom solving a problem means

building something the most

enormous, spending 100 million tons of concrete where

half of it can be stolen and used to build

luxury dachas on Rublyovka (an elite suburb outside Moscow) and in Spain.

There are no calculations whatsoever, no scientific

approaches to Moscow's planning in solving

transportation problems right now. We are already

stuck in traffic on the supposedly

light-free Leningradskoye Highway that we were

promised. We are stuck in traffic on

those wonderful exits of the Third

Transport Ring, and so on. And now

Sobyanin and the current authorities are proposing

to spend hundreds of billions more

so that in 3–4 years we will be standing

in traffic jams on the supposedly reconstructed

Leninsky Prospekt and the Northwestern route. I

if you support me, will propose

real solutions to migration issues,

real proposals, not the disgusting

hypocrisy offered by the current

government, which is the main

employer of migrants and

at the same time appears on television

posing as fighters against those migrants while signing

new decisions at the same time to create

more of these migrant enclaves in

Moscow. I will speak

honestly about the economy, and first of all about housing and utilities, where

the city-run, city-controlled

DEZ offices (municipal housing maintenance agencies) have turned into feeding troughs for

officials. Yet what we see every

day, every year, is rising utility costs. But as

ordinary Muscovites, we see that over the course of

the last 10–15 years, the quality of housing and utility services in

Moscow has not improved at all

for the better. Of course, my colleagues and I

will propose real solutions in the areas

that we work on

professionally, first and foremost in

fighting corruption, in effective management of

property, and in state contracting and

public procurement. We will propose

a serious decentralization of power.

It is absolutely impossible to govern a city with

a population comparable to that of a fairly large country

from a single office. And I firmly believe that

most of the power and most of the

money should be spent where people

live, where we live our daily lives

as ordinary city residents, where we take

our children to school and kindergarten, where we

go to the clinic, where we walk

the dog and look at the lawn where

landscaping is being done. And I believe that

it is precisely to municipalities and district

deputies that these powers should be transferred.

In the near future, very soon,

my colleagues and I will present our own

detailed, concrete, and positive

program for the development of the city of Moscow, for which

we are preparing by bringing in specialists.

Right now, I can tell you with satisfaction and

pleasure that Sergei Guriev

has agreed to work with me on

the economic part of our program.

When I speak of a positive

program, when I speak of a positive

program, I will not allow either myself or

my colleagues to be lured into the trap of this

you know, 'let's talk only about

practical matters.' I will continue

to speak about corruption in Moscow and at the federal level,

and about the right of assembly. I will

speak about stolen votes, about

electoral fraud, and about political

prisoners. All of this will be an absolutely

important part of our

program. In conclusion, I want to say that

you and I love going to rallies together

and chanting the slogan there: 'This is our city.'

It is always a very popular slogan; everyone

picks it up, Muscovites love it, and I

I ask you to support me and, together with

me, engage in a real struggle for power

in our city. This struggle must continue

until we achieve what

we entered politics for: to return

power to the people. This is our city.

Thank you, colleagues. Before, uh,

asking Alexei Navalny questions