A simple thing is happening right now: all of us have been declared second-class citizens.
We cannot not only nominate our own candidates, we cannot even sign in support of them. And if we do sign, our signature is declared invalid, and there is nothing we can do about it. Our physical existence means nothing.
This is an important moment, and what is happening now is profoundly different from anything that came before, no matter what anyone says.
Of course candidates have been removed before. Of course people have been barred from elections before. I myself was recently barred.
But never before have the authorities demonstratively removed ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE. This is a deliberate show of force. A declaration: elections are not for you. It is a curious way of forming power, where citizens are allowed to squeak a little from the sidelines, but are not permitted to take part. In fact, they are barely even allowed to squeak.
This used to happen only episodically, under the pretext of “no one would vote for you anyway.” Many of us privately agreed with that—or even wrote so on Facebook—with a sigh: well, yeah, it’s true. Who would vote for the opposition after everyone has been so thoroughly brainwashed?
Now, however, they are excluding from the elections people who were guaranteed to win, and people who already hold formal office.
Yashin and Rusakova are heads of municipal districts. They have already won there and formed a majority. Yankauskas and Galyamina lead deputy groups that make up just under half of all deputies. These four, along with Sobol, Zhdanov, Gudkov, Goncharov, and Babushkin, would have been guaranteed to win the election. Yashin, for example, is outpolling his rival by a factor of six.
Election expert Sergei Shpilkin writes quite rightly: the list of people barred from the election looks like an ideal Moscow City Duma—or even a Constituent Assembly (the historic representative body elected in 1917).
Besides the fact that they barred EVERYONE, the way they did it is a separate demonstration in itself. I described my favorite example on Facebook, but I will repeat it here:
There is an opposition activist named Alexander Firsov. He helps Yankauskas, the Zyuzino campaign headquarters, and so on.
In Yankauskas’s district, Zverev is running—the incumbent deputy, formerly from United Russia, now as an independent.
Yankauskas collected signatures; Zverev fabricated them.
So, a forged signature in Firsov’s name was found on the signature sheets of Zverev, the United Russia candidate, and it was accepted as valid.
Firsov’s real signature, given in support of Yankauskas, was declared invalid.
Yankauskas was barred from the election. Zverev became a candidate.
It has become impossible to prove that you exist. At the commission, Yashin was told: we have deemed some of your signatures forged. You fell short by 120 signatures.
He replied: “I have 140 written statements here confirming that people did sign. And another 40 people are standing here in person.”
And the commission told him: we do not care who is standing there. The working group said they are invalid.
The same thing happened to Zhdanov.
The internet is flooded with testimony from outraged people. They signed, their signatures were rejected, and now these people are appealing to the country and the world: WE EXIST. But no one hears them.
And no one wants to hear them.
That is what it means to be second-class citizens.
Third point. At the same time as it rejects candidates who genuinely collected signatures, the mayor’s office is registering all sorts of unemployed nobodies, housing maintenance workers, and so on by the dozen. All of them on the basis of signatures. And all of them supposedly collected those signatures without spending any money.
Do you understand? Yashin, the head of a council of deputies, has to spend a million rubles and post daily appeals saying “give me your signature,” yet it turns out that right next to us live hundreds of people so popular that signatures simply materialize for them on their own.
And they are all pristine, authentic, without a single correction or blemish. Sergei Semyonovich’s handwriting experts do not doubt a single one of them.
My favorite character in all this is “the estimator.”
A certain Trofimov, a guy with a criminal record (!!), employed in the position of “estimator,” got registered through signatures without any problem.
The explanation is simple. Trofimov the “estimator” was brought into the election by Alexei Shaposhnikov, the speaker of the Moscow City Duma (perhaps known to you for his fantastic exchange with deputy Shuvalova). He has the same surname as former district head Trofimov, who is running against Shaposhnikov. Alert local residents figured this out immediately.
But look how easily, effortlessly, and shamelessly they register this “estimator” on the basis of signatures.
As if you and I were furniture, or a shower curtain. You can walk around naked next to it and feel no embarrassment at all, because you are not even aware of it. No one would think to feel ashamed in front of a glass shelf in the bathroom.
And they are just as unembarrassed in front of us. They register their “estimators” by the dozen and do not hear us or pay us any attention at all.
There is only one very simple way not to be a second-class citizen.
Refuse to be one. Stop staying silent. Stop pretending this does not affect you too, or that there are more important things and projects to focus on. Stop being afraid to go out into the street and say what you think.
This is what the authorities fear most of all. All they say to each other is: if only these fools do not realize that they so vastly outnumber us that once they come out into the streets together a couple of times, it will become impossible to ignore them. And no one will be able to disperse them. All this arrogance will evaporate, and the petty officials will be running around like lapdogs, registering real candidates and removing the “estimators.”
On Saturday, July 20, there will be a large rally. It is even officially authorized, although in my view we need to stop thinking in those terms.
Come. Without you, nothing will work, and you will not be able to sit this out and delegate it to others. Until we learn to come out into the streets, there will be no change for the better.
As soon as we learn, change will come quickly.
We must make Putin, Sobyanin, and United Russia pay for these demonstrative humiliations. First and foremost, through Smart Voting.
If we cannot use elections to unite and elect the people we like, then we will unite to defeat the people we do not like.
Smart Voting is consolidated voting against United Russia. Sign up now, and on the eve of the election we will send you the name of the candidate it makes sense to vote for.
Campaign every day. Bring more people to the rally and to Smart Voting.
Do not stay silent. Do not agree to be second-class citizens.