So, everything is business as usual.
As you know, our party congress was supposed to take place tomorrow, despite the theft of our name, "Party of Progress", which happened on February 22.
It is a fairly expensive formal procedure, involving delegates traveling to Moscow from across the country, notifying the Ministry of Justice, and complying with all sorts of stupid but mandatory legal requirements.
We are registering the party for the seventh time already, so we know how to carry out these procedures flawlessly.
We are not going to give them any chance to pick apart the procedure, so methods long tested by the Kremlin have now been brought into play.
We rented a venue in advance and paid for it. It is a dedicated event space called “Kabinet Novaya Ploshchad.” I actually held a meeting with businesspeople there once, back in 2012 or so.
We warned them that because of our opposition activity, we are often turned down. The landlord assured us that they were neutral toward all political forces. We wanted to hold our March 18 election livestream there and set up our situation center there as well—and we had received preliminary approval for that.
We paid for delegates from 63 regions to travel in.
And today, as required by law, we notified the Ministry of Justice of the exact place and time of the congress.
An hour later, the landlord calls us: everything is canceled, the contract is terminated. Nothing will take place tomorrow under any circumstances. Not for any amount of money. The building owner is against it. And he is connected to the government. Yes, there is a contract, but there are also “forces” that are “beyond even the CEO’s control.” “We were simply told that it is impossible to hold the event here tomorrow.”
We went there to sort it out, and here—listen:
“You know perfectly well.”
We were also refused permission to place our situation center on March 18.
We considered various options, including simply gathering there no matter what, or assembling nearby on the street, and so on. But the problem is that the crooks at the Ministry of Justice would in any case get the chance to say: the congress was held at a location different from the one in the official notice.
As painful as it is to lose the money spent on bringing in the delegates, it would be even worse if we held the congress, say, in our office somehow, and then had to argue in court about force majeure and an unlawful refusal.
We will not give the Ministry of Justice that kind of gift. Gathering outside the building is not an option either—it would be an even bigger gift. It would give them a pretext to lock everyone up on voting day for an unauthorized rally. That is exactly what they dream of. It is important for Putin to disrupt our election monitoring campaign. Just look: our coordinator in St. Petersburg came out today after serving 30 days in detention, and they detained him again as he was leaving. They made something up, and now they are drawing up a police report.
So our congress has been disrupted. But that is for today. In the near future, we will try again to fulfill all the formal requirements and hold it. Fortunately, anticipating this possibility, we took care in advance to place announcements in the media. That too is a legal requirement.
They stole our name. They are driving us out of venues. But they cannot take away the main thing: we are a real party with people’s support.
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