Let me answer a question I’ve been asked about a million times lately: "So what’s going on with your campaign headquarters? Is there actually going to be an election campaign?" Yes, there will be a campaign, and our headquarters is already working around the clock, seven days a week. So far, none of this work is visible from the outside, because all our efforts are focused on overcoming the completely prohibitive thing known as the "municipal filter." I wrote about it in detail here. Using this filter, our so-called "effective managers" from City Hall and United Russia want to leave only the names that suit them on the ballot, "win the election," and then keep on "managing effectively" the two trillion rubles in Moscow’s budget.
So that’s what our headquarters is hammering away at right now: this "filter." Mobile teams, notaries, coordination between candidates, the most conscientious deputies persuading the less conscientious ones, and all the rest of it. It’s not a simple process: Sobyanin’s people are calling nervous deputies and threatening them, and all sorts of political con artists are buying votes so openly that newspapers write about it as if it were nothing unusual. Even so, we’re working seriously, and we’ll do everything we can to get through the "filter" and give this gang of "effective managers" real competition in the election. On top of that, a lot of other things necessary for the campaign are being done. For example, not long ago they made me come out to the MKAD (Moscow Ring Road) at 5 a.m. for a photo shoot — "because the light is good, and anyway that’s none of your business, just show up". We hope that very soon our work will become visible to the broader public as well: we’ll open a volunteer headquarters and actively call on all of you to join it in the fight against traffic jams, corruption, the terrible urban environment, poor healthcare, and United Russia, which is responsible for all of it. And for now, I’m pleased to introduce the head of my campaign headquarters, Leonid Volkov. You all know Lyonya very well: he’s an excellent organizer, a capable politician (he’s a deputy in Yekaterinburg), and simply a good, principled, honest person. Here he is pretending to be Lenin at one of the meetings:
And here is his post about the election campaign — give it a read. While I’m at it, I want to thank all the wonderful people who are helping in one way or another, taking part in the work of the headquarters, and becoming part of our team. You’re all amazing.
In fact, they’re having a quick meeting in the next room right now, but it’s still nice to send them a shout-out through LiveJournal. Stay tuned for updates, and join us.