I’m surprised that so many people were surprised when they read my statement to the Council of Europe. Many media outlets today wrote about it as if it were sensational news.
It’s simple, and I’ve said this many times.
Criminal cases are being fabricated against me, my colleagues, and my relatives primarily to prevent me from taking part in elections.
The verdict in the “Kirovles case” is a formal obstacle to my participation in elections at any level.
We proved before the European Court of Human Rights that the case was fabricated for political reasons and that this process cannot be called a “trial.” We won the case at the ECHR. The ECHR Grand Chamber agreed with us.
The verdict must be overturned immediately. My voting rights have been fully restored. Not under some vague European rules, but under Russian law.
That is not happening; Russia’s Supreme Court is doing nothing. The Council of Europe body responsible for overseeing the implementation of ECHR judgments must make a decision on this matter.
I demand to be allowed to exercise my lawful right to run in elections and to represent the people who support me and my ideas. The last election in which I took part proved that there are quite a lot of such people.
The Progress Party, which I lead, was unlawfully dissolved because it is the only party that could make it into parliament while representing citizens with democratic views. The result will be the preservation of the status quo in the State Duma, which once again does not reflect the political preferences of Russian citizens.
This strategy of the authorities is not even being hidden; it is stated outright in the disgustingly hypocritical response from Central Election Commission head Pamfilova to the appeal from the Progress Party: want to take part in elections? Run on the lists of other parties.
I urge everyone to understand once again: the main political struggle right now is not, once every four years, reluctantly campaigning for people who are certain never to get anywhere, but securing ballot access for those who can win, who have support, and who are capable of running a normal election campaign.
You know, friends, over the past three years I’ve seen plenty of this:
- Alexei, we support you and of course you should be the one running, but (barely suppressing a triumphant smile) you’re banned, so we’ll run instead, and you can support us.
Of course, that can be done too. But you yourselves know perfectly well how it will end. And I know it too. And for 17 years there has been no other ending.
a) A month before the election, we start trying to persuade ourselves to support politicians who, for all anyone knows, have been doing who-knows-what for the four years since the last election.
b) We get the predictable defeat (more humiliating with each passing year).
c) We write masochistic posts about how the people do not support democrats and/or how democrats are so bad and foolish that they cannot unite, and so on.
As the “Iron Chancellor” Otto von Bismarck, the author of many useful quotes from the internet, aptly remarked in 1895:
“There are many democrats in Russia, and they could be strong. We must demoralize them by allowing only candidates into elections who are prepared to fight for no more than 3–5% of the vote and are afraid to speak the truth about Putin’s regime. After that, they will come to hate themselves and flood Facebook with tears the way even the Oder does not overflow in early spring.”
Neither Putin nor Bismarck will fool us. I demand the restoration of my voting rights—and the rights of people like me, and there are many of them—and I want to take part in a real contest for leadership, not an imitation of one.
I call on everyone to support me in this.