By an ironic coincidence, the Progress Party’s political council meeting on how to approach the elections took place exactly one year after two members of the council—Volkov and Boyko—announced a hunger strike demanding that our candidates be allowed to run in the Novosibirsk elections. That fact perfectly illustrates the difficult relationship between the Progress Party and elections in Russia.
Below I am publishing our statement in full, and I want to say that the discussion was not easy and the political council did not merge into one ecstatic consensus. In particular, a mini-faction of hardline boycott supporters—Alburov, Zhdanov, and Rubanov—emerged and expressed their dissenting opinion.
But by majority vote, the party’s political council adopted the following decision:
The Progress Party considers the upcoming State Duma elections dishonest, unfair, and, overall, inconsistent with any meaningful definition of an electoral process. The outcome of this campaign has been predetermined in advance and is aimed at preserving the status quo: the usurpation of power by United Russia, with the tacit support of its satellites from the so-called “systemic opposition.”
The Progress Party, Russia’s leading independent political force, was unlawfully dissolved and barred from participating in the elections. The Progress Party is the only opposition party capable of running a nationwide electoral campaign and winning enough support to enter the State Duma. For this reason, we cannot recognize the election results and do not regard the 7th convocation of the State Duma as legitimately elected or representative.
The Progress Party has consistently supported participation in elections; over the past several years, our candidates have repeatedly taken part in campaigns at every level. One consequence of our active participation in the electoral process was that the party was unlawfully dissolved by the Ministry of Justice, while 7 of the 11 members of its Central Council became defendants, were put on trial, or were convicted in one politically motivated criminal case or another.
Although our party has been stripped of the ability to nominate candidates independently, and its leaders cannot run because of criminal prosecution, a number of Progress Party members are taking part in single-member district or regional campaigns after being nominated by PARNAS and Yabloko. We regard these parties as our allies and fully support the Progress Party candidates running under their banners. We also note that there are worthy candidates among the single-member district nominees of the Communist Party and A Just Russia as well.
For the reasons set out above, there is no universal strategy or single “correct” way to behave on voting day. We call on party members and our supporters to make an individual, reasonable choice in each specific situation:
— Go to the polls and vote if there is a worthy candidate in your district, or if there is a regional campaign in which opposition parties have been allowed to participate;
— Support those independent political forces that are running active, visible campaigns and fighting for every vote;
— Boycott the elections if a vote in your district would do nothing but reinforce the regime’s legitimacy;
— Remember that the electoral procedure on September 18 has nothing to do with real elections, but can nevertheless be used to spread truthful information, campaign and counter-campaign, and inflict political damage on the Kremlin authorities and United Russia.
The Progress Party will continue to seek the reversal of the decision to dissolve the party and the unconditional admission of our party and our candidates to elections at all levels.
In recent years, we, the representatives of the Progress Party, have taken part many times in events commonly referred to as “elections.” Not one of them turned out to be fair. Fair elections are not just about counting the votes correctly, although even getting to that stage has only rarely been allowed in our case. Fair elections mean being able to register your party and your candidates; equal access to the media; fair courts that issue impartial rulings; the ability for all candidates to finance their campaigns openly; and, finally, the absence of administrative coercion and stable legislation that is not rewritten from one election to the next to suit United Russia.
Will the upcoming elections be fair? We know for certain that they will not.
This applies both to party lists and to candidates in single-member districts. Their participation only lends greater legitimacy to the upcoming elections and creates the illusion that victory in them is possible.
We assess the current situation soberly and do not intend to get drawn into a game whose rules the authorities rewrite on the fly.
Since 2013, our position has remained unchanged: we want to participate in elections. But all the “elections” in which we have taken part were non-elections. The event of September 18, 2016, is not an election.
In light of the above, we consider the Progress Party’s participation in the elections inadvisable. We call on party members and supporters not to go to the polls, and instead to spend Sunday, September 18, 2016, attending to their personal affairs.