Neverov: Only those whose future is tied to Russia should be elected
The Party’s Secretary of the General Council spoke before the start of the State Duma plenary session The Moscow City Duma can only be a Duma of Muscovites—those who live and work in Moscow. To ensure that this is always the case, we are adopting laws that make it possible to elect and be elected only by those who live with the country’s problems, with people’s problems, whose future is tied to Russia, emphasized on Tuesday, June 18, Sergei Neverov, Secretary of the General Council of the United Russia party and Deputy Speaker of the State Duma, speaking before the start of the State Duma plenary session: “There is very little time left until the single voting day. On September 8, elections to local self-government bodies will be held in almost every part of the country. We will elect mayors of administrative centers, regional legislatures, and regional heads. Elections will also be held in the capital of our Motherland—Moscow. For United Russia, it is very important to go into these elections with a team of people whom the public trusts, and with a plan of action that people support. Competition will be intense. Today, 53 political parties can take part in elections. But the main question is: who will they go with, and what platform will they bring? We hold preliminary voting, where residents themselves in a region can come and vote for the nomination of candidates, for people they know. But far from everyone chooses that path. And so we see all sorts of shady characters rushing into the elections, straight from house arrest and from the defendants’ bench. Why do they want power? To avoid deserved punishment? To solve their own problems? To get their hands on what they have not yet managed to seize—as they did with Russian Post and Kirovles (a Russian state timber company). Or so that later they can claim they were afraid, they were not allowed in, the laws are bad—and thereby flatter their own vanity. But what about the people? Perhaps all of us together will have to think about improving legislation in this area—how to protect people from such pseudo-candidates and their deception. Look at how another law we adopted works today. The one under which only a person whose life and interests are exclusively in Russia can run for office. Not someone who first made money off the people by privatizing public enterprises, then stashed all his ‘golden pretzels’ abroad, bought basketball teams and agencies, and now has suddenly decided to run for mayor of Moscow. And what will such a mayor be thinking about on the eve of his team’s game in the States? Hardly the city’s problems.... They can only think in terms of companies like Google, which they compare their party to. Notice, by the way, not a Russian company. In fact, if you look closely, very little connects them to Russia at all. According to media reports, they are ready to give $210 million to repair schools in New Jersey (not Moscow or Norilsk), to invest $1 million in the Brooklyn Academy of Music (not in libraries and theaters in Russia’s regions). Well then, they should run for mayor of New York—the city of the country to which they pay a considerable share of taxes on their assets. I can understand when someone is ready to help the fraternal Belarusian people, or the starving in Africa. But when they invest in well-fed America, it looks less like charity and more like a backup airfield—a fallback option. For what? In case people here, seduced by pretty slogans, first elect them to power and then demand results from them. Speaking of results... In Yaroslavl, the mayor is a representative of the same party. The city was drowning after torrential rains! And the mayor was sitting it out in Tallinn. The city parliament gave him an F for his work, and his only response was: political rivals’ intrigues... Incompetence! One talks about ‘intrigues,’ another about ‘obstacles’—they say they were not allowed into the election. Their foreign billions hold them down like anchors. So all their talk about voters’ interests is just chatter. Because there is only one real interest there—personal capital, preferably as far away from Russia as possible. And talk in the spirit of ‘the mayor will be yours, the Duma will be ours’ belongs to the same category. It will never be yours, Mr. Prokhorov. Because by definition it can only be a Duma of Muscovites—those who live and work in Moscow. And to ensure that this is always the case, we are adopting laws that make it possible to elect and be elected only by those who live with the country’s problems, with people’s problems, whose future is tied to Russia.” http://er.ru/news/2013/6/18/neverov-izbiratsya-dolzhny-te-u-kogo-budushee-svyazano-s-rossiej/ I love this kind of thing. They bought themselves luxury apartments in Miami. Built hotels in Germany. Sent their children to study in Switzerland and England. Or simply sent their children to live abroad. Built palaces with fur-storage rooms. Bought their underage children $3 million apartments. Obtained residence permits in the Czech Republic. And then they climb up to the podium and start denouncing those whose future is supposedly not tied to Russia’s interests. And that still isn’t enough for them, these brazen pig-snouted swine: the law under which, after a conviction in a fabricated case, I and people like me are stripped of the right to run for office. They want it to be even more direct: the moment a case is opened, you’re banned from elections (“Perhaps all of us together will have to think about improving legislation in this area—how to protect people from such pseudo-candidates and their deception”). Very convenient. Don’t like a strong candidate? Mr. Bastrykin (Alexander Bastrykin, head of Russia’s Investigative Committee) will be happy to “protect people from such pseudo-candidates” and comes running joyfully, waving a criminal case file. This, by the way, is the same utterly brazen crook from United Russia who said that United Russia would not support RosPil’s bill to limit the cost of cars for officials. Supposedly, it was an ethical issue and officials would decide it for themselves. In the photo above, you can see how this United Russia mug “ethically” resolved the car issue for himself using taxpayers’ money. The best way, by the way, to spit in his face is to vote for the initiative. For all these Putin-era bureaucrats, their “future is tied to Russia” in only one sense: they want to keep sucking oil-and-gas money out of this place for as long as there is anything left in the ground.