Yeah, right — apparently the opposition is supported only by idle hipsters inside Moscow’s Garden Ring, while the rest of Russia is supposedly populated by “real people” who love Putin and United Russia.
That picture has completely stopped making sense: after the outrageous exclusion of PARNAS from the elections in Novosibirsk Region — which led to a hunger strike — a working group of the Magadan election commission has now declared that our signatures are “fake” and is recommending that PARNAS be barred from the election.
Very few signatures are needed there for registration — about 700 — and almost all of them were collected personally by the lead candidate, Georgy Alburov. How could there be any forgery here, and why would there be, if all you need is to gather 700 signatures in a month?
Zhora wrote a lot about the signature-gathering process, and his trips door-to-door, telling people how they brought down Pekhtin, who had served as a deputy from Magadan, delighted the residents.
And now an “expert” from the election commission is telling us that these signatures are fake.
It should be the perfect setup for a triumphant victory over the opposition. It’s far from Moscow, the internet works terribly, the lead candidate is not a local, and on top of that he’s been convicted. You should be able to just grab a portrait of Putin, smear some Crimea over it, wave it around, and squeeze 99% support for United Russia out of the locals.
But it’s not working. Not at all. The portrait doesn’t work, and nobody cares about geopolitical victories. More and more, people are talking about tomatoes at 250 rubles per kilogram, about how United Russia members have stolen everything, and about the baffling mandatory payments for major building repairs.
Letting Zhora Alburov and PARNAS into the election is apparently just too frightening. It simply cannot be allowed.
PS The Russian president’s press secretary denied reports of a decree barring the opposition from elections, RIA Novosti reports. “That is absolutely not true,” Peskov said, commenting on Alexei Navalny’s statement that such a decree existed to keep the democratic coalition out of the elections.http://www.gazeta.ru/politics/news/2015/07/29/n_7417981.shtml
PPS
Alburov himself on what is happening in Magadan and his team’s plans.