Alexei Navalny’s interview with Echo of Moscow in Orenburg

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Good evening, you are watching ONT TV.

This is the program *Echo of the Week*, and today on Skype we will

speak with Alexei Navalny.

Hello.

Alexei, good afternoon. Alexei, basically,

everyone is now starting to talk about the elections.

Some parties are already holding primaries, and

I want to understand how what is commonly called the

"non-systemic opposition" plans to

go into these elections.

Well, first of all, we do not agree with the label

"non-systemic opposition" — we are the real opposition.

There is an opposition that says what

needs to be said, what it believes should be said,

and there are people who conceal the truth

or lie. That is why we are the most genuine

opposition.

And within our coalition, which

was recently created, there are several parties

that are officially registered, and after various

negotiations, we came to the decision that we

will run with a united list on the basis of

the RPR-PARNAS party. Alexei, if

you had your own party — if the Party of

Progress now existed as a

normal legal party — would there still be this

alliance or not? The Party of Progress

does exist; it is just not being granted registration.

Because a party is people, not

a piece of paper. But now they even want to ban you

from calling yourselves a

party. Exactly. Apparently,

that is because they are afraid of our party.

Quite simply, I am the leader of the Party of Progress,

and of course, if it had been

registered, if we had been given that

registration, I would have raised the issue

of us going into the elections specifically on the basis

of the Party of Progress. But I live in

the real world. I am not trying to

pull the blanket over myself, but to act in the interests

of the coalition and in the interests of voters in the

elections that will take place now in

September 2015, and which will also be held

in your region. We

will run on the basis of RPR-PARNAS, and we

have agreed that in the

2016 elections — the State Duma elections — we

will run on the basis of the RPR-PARNAS party. There is

one very important, key thing that I

would like to convey to your viewers.

The main difference of this new

opposition — and I consider it precisely a new opposition —

that is going into the elections is that we form all

our candidate lists through a competitive

procedure. United Russia also holds

primaries — ours took place last week —

United Russia holds them too,

but it is no wonder everyone starts laughing when

United Russia's primaries are mentioned, because

those primaries are structured around a predetermined result.

Those are primaries for people about whom

it is already clear that they are supposed to win. We

are holding real primaries. Alexei, well,

when there were elections to the Opposition Coordination Council, you

won, and that too was

expected. I won because I ran

an election campaign, and I hope that

the candidates who want to become real

candidates for deputy seats will also

run an election campaign, first

among activists,

among those who genuinely support

the activists, and prove that they deserve

to make the list. Then they will get onto

the list, and then we will vote for them

in the actual elections. We

really want — just a second — we simply really

want to move away from the old system where everyone

was appointed from Moscow, and we believe that

the residents of the regions themselves should form

these lists. Alexei, how do you

see the differences in election campaigning

in the regions — and in very different regions,

for example, places like Yekaterinburg on the one hand,

or Orenburg, or

some even more agricultural

region where you may not be as

well known at all?

We are going — we deliberately chose

three completely different regions:

Kaluga Region, which is an industrial

region where in recent years many

have been built —

car plants, because of that; then there is

Kostroma Region, which is absolutely

depressed economically; and Novosibirsk Region,

which serves as a kind of scientific

hub for Russia. The campaigns will be completely

different. And how did you choose them? Why not

Orenburg, for example?

There are no elections to the legislative assembly there, and for us

that is of fundamental importance. The extremely

important elections taking place in your area are

the elections for the Orenburg City Council. We

see that in Orenburg Region — and I am

very glad to be able to say this — United

Russia traditionally gets a low percentage of the vote.

That shows that the voters of

Orenburg Region understand everything about

that party. And I very much hope there will be

real competition in your elections.

I hope that some forces for good, whether in

parties or among independent deputies,

will be able to push back against United Russia. But we

will not be participating in an organized way in

Orenburg Region, unfortunately. Well, at least

RPR-PARNAS will

nominate candidates — RPR-PARNAS candidates

from RPR-PARNAS will run in single-member districts,

certainly. I do not know whether you are aware of this or not,

but here, you know, perhaps it would be

too much of an exaggeration to say that here

RPR-PARNAS has some kind of negative result,

that it has a negative

rating. Well, let us put it this way: it is close

to zero. How much...

Do you think this brand complicates your

campaign going forward, because no matter how you look at it,

these, yes, democrats of the 1990s

— broadly speaking, those associated with RPR

PARNAS — generally provoke in many

people, even those whose views are close to yours,

a certain

allergic reaction. I understand; in fact, that is

one of the reasons why I created my own

party, because I represent

perhaps several people with somewhat different

views, but we created a coalition, and we have

what we have.

An independent party. What you said about

the negative attitude — yes, it existed

yesterday. That is exactly why we all want

to change it. We want

to make the party list, for example in Orenburg,

so that if it appears, it will not be

a list invented by Alexei

Navalny or Mikhail Kasyanov; it will be

a list formed by the people themselves.

There is, after all, a central headquarters that

organizes primaries. If it becomes necessary

to organize such primaries in your region, they

will be organized centrally from

Moscow, but at the same time they will be absolutely

fair, and those taking part in them will be precisely

the residents of the region. And what is the guarantee that

these people will actually make it onto the ballot? Why do you

think they will be registered?

Excellent question. There is no such guarantee. And we

understand that the authorities, of course, will be

inclined to make sure that the strongest

candidates, the ones identified in the course of

the process, are precisely the ones removed from

registration. But nevertheless, we are doing

everything possible. We will appeal to

the voters, we will demand

registration, we will collect signatures honestly and well,

and do everything within our power.

Alexei, does that mean that if

in Orenburg, representatives of RPR-PARNAS

together with this democratic coalition

are registered without any problems, that means

the authorities simply do not see them

as

competitors? I think that

they certainly do see them as competitors, and

every time there were some myths

that they did not view this opposition as

competitors, we successfully

disproved those myths, including in elections in

Moscow. The same thing happened in elections in

Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, and so on.

This is not only about me, but about other

politicians as well. And

if they register our list, that

will be a signal that they are afraid not to

register it; if they do not register it,

that too will be a signal that they are afraid.

Register it? Fine. To what extent

do you understand? I know one thing: in the city of

Orenburg there are a great many people

who support electing the mayor, who support

an end to corruption, who support having

a transparent system for housing and utilities management, who support

tax revenues remaining in

the region. Alexei, that is exactly the question:

there are many such people, and they will vote. How much do these

municipal elections in the country, in principle,

matter now? How important is it

to take part in them or not?

Because, by and large, this is the election of

people who will sit on this

city council and will not influence anything,

even more so now in our

region they will not have much influence on the election

of the city head, because he will be

appointed by the governor through a commission. Unfortunately,

you are right in many ways. Indeed,

especially in recent years, the system

of governance has been reduced to the point where

the regions and cities have been stripped of all

powers, all the money has been taken away, and everyone is ordered around by

some men from Moscow or federal

inspectors.

I believe elections must be participated in.

We are going into these elections, in effect, with a

federal political agenda. We

want

to use the mechanisms of legislative

initiative that regional

parliaments have, in order to achieve

the adoption at the federal level of

decisions that would change the system

of taxation, so that money remains in

the regions. We need to make sure that

the regions say this openly. Right now,

paradoxically, the regions are silent. That is,

not officially — behind the scenes they all

complain, “Why is Moscow robbing us?” but

the official position of any region is:

“Please, keep robbing us. Rob us more,”

“we like it.” But what do you mean by “robbing”?

Well, when it comes to taxes, we are one country, after all.

I do not know — say, the same

Kostroma Region is not to blame for the fact that it has no

oil while we do. That is why

Moscow distributes it rationally, doesn’t it?

Moscow distributes it irrationally. Regions

really can never be

completely equal to one another, and

indeed, we are a federal country, and

if somewhere people are extremely poor and

nothing is working out for them, we must

help them. Nevertheless,

there is one absolutely clear fact,

which is that powers

and money should be where those

powers are, where that money is needed. And

if money is earned in a region, it

should remain there. Of course, if you

earn money from oil, then naturally

the share of the mineral extraction tax is high.

We are not saying that in

Orenburg Region all

the money from oil should stay there, but the fact that you are left with only

Or is this...

Are we talking about VAT, which is completely

taken away from the regions? This is an absolutely

wrong and ugly system.

We understand that there are regions that will not

support your position—some provinces

that are, again, not far from

Moscow, the North Caucasus—they will not support it.

Most likely. But you know, this

will be supported by everyone, because it is an incentive

to earn money. Well, please explain

why, right now, in

Orenburg, any mayor or governor

or anyone else, there is any reason to create business. Why

does any of this need to be done? So that

businesses pay VAT, and that VAT goes to

Moscow? No—right now everything is set up

in such a way that Moscow—even though I am a Muscovite,

you understand, I ran for mayor of Moscow,

and I wish this city well—Moscow as a

city, as a federal subject, also—listen, I

remember that at one point you ran with the slogan, 'Stop'

'Stop feeding the Caucasus' (a Russian nationalist political slogan). Now it's 'Stop

feeding Moscow'—am I understanding correctly that you

are going into regional elections with Moscow as

the federal center? Certainly, stop

feeding it. Moscow as a city would benefit greatly

from reform. And you see, right now in our country

right now in the country

there are only seven donor regions. Well, this is

an ugly system. Through an artificial

process, through the plundering of the regions,

things have been arranged so that all the regions are poor. You in

Orenburg Region earn

money, but formally you too are considered

a subsidized region, you understand. Yes, absolutely.

We’re breaking for commercials now, and right after

the break we’ll continue.

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We continue our program. Let me remind you that

we are joined by Alexei Navalny. Alexei,

in the first part you said that you were

pleased that in our most recent

elections, United Russia did not get as

many votes as in other regions. In some

elections—for example, the State Duma elections—it in the

city actually came in second after the Communist Party, but

again, I would point out: after the Communist Party. And those are not

people, so to speak, with liberal views, right?

Or rather, not people, but views close to yours.

Why do you think that some part of that

will come your way?

Listen, this is not something unique to

Orenburg. In Moscow, for example, in those districts

where the technical intelligentsia

is concentrated, people also vote for the Communist Party.

Akademgorodok in Novosibirsk (a major Soviet-era scientific and research district) also

votes for the Communist Party. Why? Because it is

a protest vote, and these people have no one

to vote for. That is exactly why we are now

building a new kind of opposition,

so that you yourselves first decide who this

opposition is, and then support these people

in elections, except...

If they are allowed to run. Still, let’s always say

'if they are allowed to run,' because

frankly, on that score there are

serious

doubts. We must do what we believe

is right. Oh, we seem to be having some connection issues.

Alexei, I hope that now our

internet connection will stabilize. Let’s

try reconnecting. Alexei, can you

hear me now? Yes, good. Yes, excellent.

I hope that now everything will

work properly. So, please repeat once more regarding

your view that there is no need

to be afraid that you will not be allowed to run, that there is no need

to be afraid that we will not be registered.

We understand perfectly well

that this is some decision by Putin or

by some other people, but we must

do what we believe is right. We cannot

make our lives, our

political activity, dependent

on their whims. We have the right to run in

elections, and we will run in these elections. As for

the high level of support for the Communists,

that is protest voting, because there is no

alternative. You correctly said that

the opposition liberal parties,

the democratic parties, performed weakly.

We

need to regroup: vote for any other

party except United Russia. Look at the

current State Duma and look at the laws

that the deputies are passing, many of whom got there

thanks to this

tactic. I knew you would ask that. Well,

indeed, you are absolutely right.

The high results of A Just Russia in

large cities especially are to a great extent

the result of this very strategy, which I

actively promoted and of which I may have been

one of the main drivers.

I believe that at that moment we

were completely right. There was no other strategy

at the time, and there was no party

that was genuinely going to the State Duma on

democratic principles. Unfortunately,

both the Communists and A Just Russia,

and the LDPR, turned out to be far

more timid and compliant than we had hoped.

But surely they are sincerely applauding

Crimea? Surely they are sincerely voting

on Crimea and applauding every decision on it?

Maybe they are voting sincerely, but I

very much doubt that they sincerely

vote for repressive laws

concerning election rules,

rules for holding rallies, the persecution

of non-profit organizations, and so on.

That is, they vote for these things, spout

some nonsense about foreign agents, but

we know they do not believe it themselves. Unfortunately,

well, sadly, I do cooperate with

the Communists too, including, for example, on

issues involving the fight against illicit enrichment.

and so on, but on many political

issues they turned out to be cowards, and we

are confident that, because of this, voters will turn away from them

and give us their votes.

Alexei, let me ask you this, just so we can

understand: you have a sociological

center, right? Well, a center that conducts

relevant research. So when

you started getting results from it, did they

not

discourage you — on the contrary, were they more positive

than what is being published

by the state polling centers? Oh, come on — those results made us happy, on the

one hand. We found nothing new:

Putin's ratings, his formal approval ratings,

really are high. We

are recording the same 84% that FOM (Public Opinion Foundation, a Russian pollster) records.

But this is a rating of loneliness, a rating

that reflects a situation where there is no one else,

where there are no other politicians in the country. But

what interests us much more is not measuring

politicians' ratings. What interests us is

people's attitude toward

corruption. Have you measured any regions

on issues related to

elections? We constantly measure regions; we are

less interested in nationwide figures. We

measure regions. Right now, of course, first and foremost

we are measuring those three regions I

mentioned: Kaluga, Kostroma,

and Novosibirsk. We measure different parts of the

country, and we know — you see, this is why

after creating our sociological service, I

believed even more strongly in the success of our cause,

which is by no means hopeless, because

we know that people are against corruption,

that people are against illicit enrichment,

that people want

elections to be fair.

In one region and in

another, to what extent does the country still

live with the same problems, or

does every place

have its own? Of course, everywhere the top issues are rising

prices, and everywhere housing and utilities services are among the main problems,

and so on. Sometimes there are differences: in some places

the road situation is especially bad,

in others there is some obvious

corrupt official, an openly demonstrative

corrupt mayor or governor — those become

more important issues. Of course, the Urals and Siberia, on

some questions, differ a little from

some other regions,

and so on. But in any regions, both

depressed and

prosperous, basic democratic

ideas — fair elections, direct elections of mayors

and governors, the fight against corruption,

an independent judicial system —

are supported by everyone. So I can say

that regardless of whatever percentages

Putin may have, Putin is in the minority on these

issues against us. He appoints

governors, while we want to elect them, and everyone

is with us on that. I don't know whether you agree

with me or not, but what you listed

— those are basically the main

principles, and in fact the Popular Front

has now adopted them too, in its own way. But still,

they keep talking, talking about corruption and so on.

They say some governors are crooks — well then

excuse me, I have a very simple question

for the Popular Front: your Popular Front

is headed by Putin himself. The anti-corruption front is

headed by me, and I have no

powers. If you are talking

about corruption in public procurement, then

change the public procurement law. I, for example,

have written anti-corruption

amendments to the law, but we cannot get them

adopted. But the Popular Front,

if you'll excuse me, has the majority in the State

Duma (Russia's lower house of parliament), so I appeal to the Popular

Front. I can tell you one thing: don't mess

with our heads. If you declare something, then

do it, because you have the majority, you have

the president, you have

84 percent.

In those regions, Prokhorov either took part then

through his party or personally, and overall, do you

use that result as a benchmark, or

does that result mean nothing to

you? I mean, do you think that

the protest vote was going to A Just Russia, the Communist Party, or

that Prokhorov was also accumulating

what was, in general, potentially

your vote in the presidential election? Prokhorov

Of course.

He did accumulate it, of course. That too is

some kind of benchmark. But for us, Prokhorov's percentages

are still, well,

a somewhat narrow segment. As I already

said, it is a liberal-democratic

electorate, really. Still,

I don't have any major complaints about

Prokhorov, but he is still a rather specific

person: an oligarch who became rich during

the loans-for-shares privatization auctions. Well,

his position on many political issues

was, frankly speaking, not very clear and

quite ambiguous. And now he has

left politics altogether. The reason I brought up

Prokhorov, actually, is because

the alliance you have now

— well, the more links there are, the

less reliable the system is. I hope you

agree with me on that. And we remember

that the fate of Prokhorov's party was

pitiful once, and the second time it was so bad

that we won't even bring it up. Aren't you afraid

that as the election gets closer, there will begin

to be some kind of internal

conflicts within the coalition parties? Their interest is,

naturally, to make their own party

dominate, and so on. So internally

there is always a fairly complicated dialogue going on.

However, I am confident that within our

coalition nothing will fall apart, because

Unlike Prokhorov, we are genuinely

independent parties, that is, independent politicians

who

really are not taking part on Putin's orders

in elections. We are taking part in these

elections because that is what needs to be done, and we

are participating with the platform we

believe in, and that is the most important thing. Of course, this is

the essence of politics: eternal competition between

leaders. No one will ever unite

in such a way that everyone is

friends with everyone else. But within our coalition

of independent politicians, I am sure that we

will act effectively together and

achieve results. Alexei, just so we understand,

you have surely done some analysis

for yourselves already, both on regional legislative assemblies

and on city councils — they are called different things

in different cities — where are you confident that

you have a chance of winning seats on city councils?

And where is the goal simply to take part?

What category of regions does Orenburg fall into?

Orenburg, based simply on your analysis of what is happening there...

As for Orenburg, I won't lie to you, I won't

say that we are working on the elections in

Orenburg — in fact, that is not the case.

And as for the elections there, both for RPR-PARNAS

and for the Progress Party, and for RPR-PARNAS, we

feel... So you are not involved there, we can see that.

That is because, you understand, you cannot embrace

the immeasurable. This single voting day

was invented so that the opposition would have

less room to maneuver. In theory, though, this should come from the grassroots, shouldn't it?

Tell me, why, if you say that there are

your supporters, is there no

mass grassroots movement in cities

like Orenburg, which after all has more than 500,000

people? A mass grassroots movement is absent because

there are no formats for mass political activity.

What kind of mass movement can there be

for the Progress Party if the Progress Party

was not merely barred from the election? It was

officially stripped of its registration. A mass

movement is expressed in the fact that

United Russia is effectively suffering

defeat. Yes, you said that in the city it came in

second place.

Cities like Orenburg are

of course quite promising for

elections.

And it would be worth working on them actively. The fact

that you do not have elections specifically for the

legislative assembly somewhat, well,

frankly speaking, reduces our

country's interest in these elections. But I am sure that in

the city of Orenburg there are interesting

politicians who will run in these elections and

will fight. Alexei, we literally have only

a couple of minutes left, and I have to ask

about the investigations that the Anti-Corruption Foundation

regularly publishes. And

it has to be said that lately

Yakunin has been getting the most attention — well,

except perhaps for Putin's dacha, probably, yes. But

why Yakunin? Why him and not, say, Sechin?

Why him in particular?

We deal with everyone; it's just that Yakunin's corruption,

frankly speaking, is the easiest

to investigate. This man

steals so much and so openly that, well,

we are not the special services, and even for us it is easy

to find these things — his estate, where there is

a gatekeeper's house,

the schemes, his children directly

involved in corruption — all of this

is so obvious that it is easy to show.

That is the first point. Second, Russian Railways (RZD) is

a specific kind of monopoly. These are the people

who cancel commuter trains across the

country, the people who constantly

raise fares and beg for additional

state money. Yakunin himself

is someone who presents

himself not just as some state manager, but as

a politician who is constantly, so to speak,

denouncing consumer society, constantly

denouncing so-called foreign agents,

a label they apply to people like us. We have 30

seconds — yes, we have 30 seconds until the end

of the program. Just so we understand: knowing

how the investigative authorities deal with your cases,

how many court cases have you had

recently? And how many of

your recent investigations

are already being investigated by the Investigative Committee

or by some other bodies? Is there

even one case where you can say

that yes, they took it up? Well, you are asking

a question that sounds like this: is Putin investigating

his own corruption? The answer

is no. He does not want to investigate his

own corruption. That is why we

publish these facts. On every single fact, we

know that sooner or later a criminal case will be opened.

But we cannot

boast of

many formal investigations. Thank you.

Alexei, thank you for joining us. Goodbye.

Thank you.