Last Saturday, the "People's Alliance" party established its first regional branch — in Sverdlovsk Region — and I warmly congratulate them on that.
Let me remind you that even though, after Medvedev's political reform, registering a party requires not 40,000 members but 500, anyone wishing to create a party still has to go through the tedious and resource-intensive procedure of formally establishing regional branches. You have to gather somewhere, go through the whole "heard and resolved" routine, invite a representative from the Ministry of Justice, and so on. The fact that "People's Alliance" has begun holding these tedious meetings means that it has entered the home stretch of the registration process. In six months, the Ministry of Justice should complete its registration. Well, that is, it should do so under the law — unless the justice minister's phone with the state emblem on it starts ringing and "guiding instructions" come in. It's clear why the first meeting took place in Yekaterinburg: "People's Alliance" is the only genuinely "regional party," and much of its ideological and organizational core is based in Yekaterinburg. You probably remember how it all began. As of today, "People's Alliance" is, of course, the most promising party project — one that really has every chance of becoming a "party of a new type," with new principles of governance and organization based, among other things, on direct voting by all party members. For now, unfortunately, all we have are hellish little tadpoles, where everything is run by one person (the party leader) and the party apparatus subordinate to him. The party apparatus wants to eat, and under our conditions there's nowhere to get money, so the party leader goes to the Kremlin and begs for money for the apparatus with which he runs the party, with which he opens his road to the Kremlin in order to ask for money for the apparatus with which he runs the party. And so on, endlessly. A closed ecosystem. As a result, all we get from the existence of parties is a vain party leader who gets invited to receptions at the Kremlin (and at the U.S. embassy as well), plus another 20 to 150 people around him on salary. And the power, of course, belongs to "United Russia." Obviously, creating a new system is not a quick matter. It's painful, and the road is strewn with metal balls lying on the floor mixed in with metal spikes (like in ninja movies). Many times yet we'll have to smash our faces into those spikes. Those who would like to join this difficult but interesting process can go here: http://peoplesalliance.ru/support/member/ "People's Alliance" on VKontakte http://vk.com/peoplesalliance On Facebook http://www.facebook.com/groups/peoplesalliance.ru/ Regional party groups http://vk.com/topic-41455590_27501634 Twitter https://twitter.com/alliance_party Website http://peoplesalliance.ru/