I had started to think these “elections” would never provoke any thought in me other than a constant “why on earth aren’t they running a proper campaign?!” But now, at last, here is a leaflet I actually want to hand out to people.
In any discussion about whether it’s worth taking part in elections, the argument always comes up that at the very least, during an election campaign we can canvass and tell people the truth. I’ve said that myself many times. And people usually agree: ah yes, sure, campaigning is something you can do.
So in this election, to be honest, it really irritates me: you were actually allowed to run (unlike us, the Progress Party), so why aren’t you campaigning? This is exactly the time to use campaign opportunities to talk about what the authorities most want to hide—above all, corruption, and the personal involvement of the country’s top leadership in it, and so on.
But almost everyone (except Maltsev from PARNAS) prefers to keep it “constructive, without getting personal.” What the hell do we need this “constructive” approach for? Where’s the political struggle in that?
The most important task is to go into this election and tell everyone plainly about Putin, his regime, and the people around him.
Some are ready to do that (for example, our candidates running on the PARNAS and YABLOKO party lists), but there is a technical obstacle: a new law bans the use of photos and names of people who are not themselves candidates.
And here the Central Election Commission, headed by Ella Pamfilova, actually helped us. The thing is, they had been tasked with helping the Communist Party of the Russian Federation use Stalin in its campaign. This is an important Kremlin assignment: the Communists keep brandishing Stalin, and while he doesn’t win them any extra votes, he does scare off educated urban voters and stops the communists from scooping up all the protest votes. That’s the kind of coordinated game of deliberate losing all sides are playing.
But under the law, you can’t put Stalin on billboards, right? So the Central Election Commission issues a special clarification saying that a photo of Stalin is not allowed, but a drawing is.
Excellent. We don’t need anything else. We’ll make do with drawings too. So the new leaflet by Nikolai Lyaskin (running in the Babushkinsky constituency, which includes the districts of Bogorodskoye, Sokolniki, Alexeyevsky, Babushkinsky, Butyrsky, Losinoostrovsky, Marfino, Maryina Roshcha, Ostankinsky, Rostokino, Sviblovo, and Yaroslavsky) looks like this:
These aren’t photographs, they’re drawings, I assure you. The Central Election Commission approved it.
I urge all candidates to use this loophole and draw Russian reality in their campaign materials.
Lyaskin, meanwhile, has done well. If you live in Bogorodskoye, Sokolniki, Alexeyevsky, Babushkinsky, Butyrsky, Losinoostrovsky, Marfino, Maryina Roshcha, Ostankinsky, Rostokino, Sviblovo, or Yaroslavsky, make sure to come out and vote for him. Better yet, join his campaign headquarters and work together.