Alexei Navalny’s meeting with voters in Moscow’s Krylatskoye district. Part 1

Yesterday we rehearsed our

program at our campaign headquarters. And

we had these really cool slides. On

those slides there was infographics, we ran through all of

it, and then decided

to completely change and scrap everything, because

all those slides and that infographics

were all very impressive and very

serious-looking, but it felt a lot like,

well, a corporate presentation for people

who sell soap. They are very good

at selling it. They will prove to everyone that they

will increase soap sales from 5 to 17 percent in

the next three quarters, and so on, and

so forth. But we did not write this program

as soap salespeople—though of course there is nothing

wrong with selling soap. We

wrote this program for ourselves. So our

program, and what I am about to

say about it now, will be stories

about us, plain and simple. And I think

each of us will be able to recognize ourselves in

one of these stories. And the booklet you have

in your hands—you can simply

follow along. Does everyone have a copy of the program? I

take it that in this hall

everyone has one. Excellent. You

can follow the text and, at the very

least, see some more specific

proposals on the issues I am

talking about. And let’s try to make

this event as

informal as possible. So shout-outs, approval,

or disapproval, and so on, are all entirely

welcome. And we would be betraying

ourselves if we did not begin our program with

the section on fighting corruption. And here we have

a story about Lyuba. Hi, Lyuba.

One day Lyuba simply decided that it would be nice

to have flowers growing by the entrance to her building—she lives on

Nagatinskaya. Since Lyuba

works at the Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF),

she knows for a fact that Moscow allocates huge amounts of money for

urban improvement and beautification.

She went onto the public procurement website and

found that, in fact, huge sums had been allocated

to plant flowers

near Lyuba’s building entrance. But the flowers

are not there.

That is why Lyuba is here with us today,

because our program

provides for oversight of all spending by

the city of Moscow. Our program

calls for the introduction of contract

monitors. And these are absolutely

hard-won points in the program, which

would have the right to monitor what is actually

being purchased, what is not being purchased, what

is being built, and what is not being built. And as if it were not enough that Lyuba

was left without flowers,

yesterday, when she was coming out of

the Yasenevo metro station, she was wading through knee-deep

water,

just like some of you, in fact,

who were near the Yasenevo metro station. And when

this morning she looked sadly

at her ruined shoes, she heard

on the radio a statement that

the Moscow city government was buying for itself

the newspaper Argumenty i Fakty for $100 million

.

And she knew that Moscow spends

half a billion dollars every year

on various media outlets. And no one asked

Lyuba, did not ask you, did not even ask

the deputies whether the city of Moscow actually needs

the newspaper Argumenty i Fakty. That is why Lyuba

is with us, because our program

provides that all such purchases

must be justified. All of this

justification must be absolutely

transparent. And any person who

simply looks out the window and

sees that someone is building something somewhere

in their building, near their building, in

their courtyard, will be able, by going online, with a single

click, to find out who is building, what

is being built, which workers exactly are on the job, and

how much it costs. This level of

transparency can be ensured right

now, and we will absolutely make it happen

when we come to power in the city of

Moscow. Thank you, Lyuba, for

being with us. [applause]

Now let’s talk about Alexei. Alexei is

a municipal deputy in the

Kurkino district. Alexei has a major—he has

a major problem: residents are constantly calling him.

Residents keep calling him because

he is their deputy, and in Kurkino there is

construction going on—they want to take away a vacant lot or

a small park where people spend their time. And he

cannot do anything about it. He is a deputy,

elected by these people. But the system

of power in Moscow is structured so archaically

that all decisions are made

exclusively at 13 Tverskaya (Moscow City Hall). And at

13 Tverskaya, in reality, no one will even

see any of what will be

built somewhere out in Alexei’s Kurkino, but

it will be built, the residents will be

unhappy, and Alexei will still be

getting their angry calls. Moscow’s budget—

we all know how much it is, right? 1.6 trillion rubles.

Do you know how much money

all

municipal deputies like

Alexei control altogether? It is 16 billion rubles. One percent of all the money

in Moscow is allocated where

people actually live, where they

face their everyday problems.

That is why Alexei is here with us today,

because he supports the point in our

election platform that says we will

redistribute both powers and

money to the level where people live and

where there are deputies who already

are now ready to deal with this money.

[applause]

And here is Zhora, whom I very rarely see

in a jacket. Everyone knows and loves Zhora, but

recently he committed a minor

offense and was brought to

administrative responsibility. He

was tried by a justice of the peace, who threw the book at him

and held him fully liable without even

examining anything. The police brought it in and

handed it over, and the judge sided with the police.

And Zhora is with us today because our

election platform includes a point saying

that under federal law

in Moscow, justices of the peace

can be elected either by the Moscow City Duma, as

they effectively are now appointed from the Kremlin,

or elected by the public. And we

demand that they be elected by the people,

because 70% of ordinary citizens who

deal with the courts, [applause]

are not criminals at all,

but are dealing with cases involving

divorce, division of property, or

minor offenses—all of that goes through these lower courts. And

the residents of Moscow can, and they are ready to,

absolutely choose them themselves.

Let’s talk about

Lena.

Lena is young and beautiful, as you can see,

and, incidentally, very law-abiding, and

even in her worst nightmare she would never imagine that

she might suddenly be taken away and locked up for, say,

a year and a half in prison.

That would be terrible, but unfortunately

if the government in Moscow does not change,

that is exactly what will happen, because every

Muscovite who lives in Moscow—if Lena

lives in Moscow for 30 years or more—will

lose a year and a half of life sitting

in traffic. A year and a half of life—each of

us, every one of us who spends 30

years in Moscow, will spend a year and a half

in traffic jams. That time will be taken

from each of us. Each of us will sit in this

little prison. That is why Lena is with us today

because our

program includes provisions stating that all

transport decisions

must undergo expert review. All projects

costing more than 3 billion rubles must

undergo international review,

so that we do not end up with a situation like

the Fourth Ring Road,

which they first built—you know,

it became the most expensive road in the world—and then

later declared it an urban-planning

mistake. All the people who made

that urban-planning mistake

are still sitting in City Hall, in the relevant offices, in

Moscow’s architecture department.

Lena is with us today because our

program provides for a strategy

for Moscow’s development. At long last, we must

decide whether we are relocating or not

the federal government bodies, where

we are building the parliamentary center, where our

major roads will go, and so on. Lena is with us

because she likes our approach,

which is based on calculations showing that we should not

pour money into giant interchanges,

but instead build a capillary

transport network in Moscow. Thank you very much, Lena,

for being with us today and supporting our

program. [applause]

Lena’s neighbor Roman, who is now doing

a tremendous amount of work, helping us with

municipal deputies, found out that

an Uzbek janitor earns 18,000 rubles.

Yet Roman reads in the newspapers that

the average salary of a migrant janitor in Moscow

is 42,000 rubles. And this janitor told him

that he works on the understanding that

he hands over part of the money to

the district maintenance office. The office passes part of these bribes on

to the local district administration, which sends it all on

to the prefecture. And this whole system also

shares with the police. That is why undocumented migrants

have come here and will keep coming here

regardless of whether there is any real

need for them, because they are simply

needed so that this whole

structure can endlessly suck money out of

these migrants. And Roman is here with us today

because he supports the point in our

program that says all migrants must

be registered, and all information about

whether migrants are present or not must

simply be published. You

go online and you see your

janitor, you see his salary. The

janitor himself and the janitors’ union understand

what their wages are, and no one can

deceive anyone. In addition, Roman

supports the part of our program in

the migration section, because he knows very well

that this janitor’s children, unfortunately,

have lived here, but they have not

gone to school, they speak Russian poorly,

and so they have no real

future here, yet they are already

Moscow teenagers. In order

to earn money, they resort to the

simplest method. Their

cousin comes from Tajikistan and

brings them 200 grams of heroin every quarter.

They sell it in Roman’s courtyard and

make money from it simply

to survive. And he supports

the point in our program that says the Moscow mayor’s office

must use every possible measure. We

have set out what measures are needed in order

to avoid creating these criminal

ghettos, where people live in basements here

30 to a room and are

forced—and will in any case end up selling

drugs simply in order

to survive. Konstantin Yankaovska, deputy

of the Zyuzino municipal district. He recently

was absolutely furious because

Konstantin regularly gets calls

from local residents complaining about high

utility and housing service charges. And he himself is unhappy about it. He

pays a great deal for his apartment. And

Konstantin was furious because in the

newspapers he read that the daughter company of

Mosenergo, the supplier,

which supplies heat and electricity, heat and electricity

to our apartments, had transferred to United

Russia 200 million rubles. Those 200 million rubles

were sponsorship money.

They were simply built into the tariff. And Konstantin

is with us today because he supports

the points of our program that say

that all expenses of utility providers

and district maintenance offices should undergo

a basic and public audit. That all

these so-called investment programs,

gigantic and mythical as they are. Once again

the monopolists hand us this huge tome

of paperwork about how, supposedly, they will invest

a billion dollars in their own development,

why tariffs need to be raised by that amount,

and yet in the end there is no development at all, only

new houses somewhere on the southern coast

of France. This can be checked with a simple

audit. Konstantin cannot achieve this on his own.

Together with us, he will.

Thank you very much to Konstantin

for joining us. [applause]

Who shall we talk about now? About

a woman named Yulia. Shall we?

Yulia has a family. Yulia has two

children.

Because of this, Yulia is concerned about the situation

at her local outpatient clinic in the district of

Maryino. Because every time

you need to go to the clinic even

just to get some certificate, you spend 3

hours there. At the same time, Yulia knows perfectly well that

for every Muscovite, as I told her,

24,000 rubles are allocated just for

outpatient clinic services. Thus

Yulia’s family has 100,000

rubles a year allocated to

outpatient clinic services. That amount

is allocated per person. I am simply

curious: please raise your hand,

those of you who have been to your local

outpatient clinic in the last year. And now raise

your hand if you have never in your life been to

your local outpatient clinic.

There you have it. And yet 24,000 rubles go toward

each person. Yulia is with us today. She

has, of course, another reason as well, but

among other things, [laughter] because she

supports the points of our program.

[applause]

The idea that the enormous sums of money available in

[applause] Moscow should be spent first and foremost

on increasing

the number of general practitioners,

family doctors. We have enough money,

facilities, and infrastructure to have

enough primary care doctors so that every

family would know its general practitioner

and could turn to them without difficulty

and receive a consultation the same day.

We have the money for this. There is

more than enough money that if we introduce

the provision in our program that

money should follow the patient, doctors at

outpatient clinics will be chasing after our

family, because we have 100,000

rubles that can be claimed. And Yulia

is with us today because she

supports the idea that we should not

keep pouring money endlessly

into healthcare bureaucracy, into this whole setup,

into buying scanners. In Moscow we have more scanners

than London does per

capita, and more than in

Berlin. We get neither better treatment outcomes nor

better prevention from this. What we

get instead is a $1 million bribe

built into every procurement of a

scanner. That is all. Thank you, Yulia,

for being with us and supporting our

program. [applause]

Since we have already talked about Yulia, let us

talk about Alexei, who is very

concerned that in Moscow the level of

secondary education is falling

catastrophically. Alexei has—I have

a daughter, she is 11 years old. Right now her school

is being merged with some other school. And

his wife, who is on the parent

committee, constantly complains that this

other school is worse. And no one understands the reasons

for the merger. I think most of you

who have children of school

age have encountered

this. More than that, a kindergarten is being

attached to this school as well, and overall

it is completely unclear what this is all about. No one even

explains why any of this is happening. Even though we

have enough money for secondary education,

among other things. That is why we are putting forward program points

that say: first,

full transparency in decision-making

on school mergers; second, full

transparency in publishing

Unified State Exam results and interim

results. In other words, a school reports

on how well its students are doing, and

funding is tied, among other things,

to that. And in our schools it is entirely possible

to introduce

the same programs, the same systems

for enrolling children in and withdrawing them from

schools that exist throughout

European countries and that are fully

transparent and can be used

by parents right now. [applause]

Vladimir. You all know Vladimir, but

some of you know him. Vladimir worked in

at a huge corporation and held a very

senior position. And then, for reasons beyond his

control, he was forced to leave

that corporation. You know, he worked with

the Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF), and that became

an insurmountable obstacle to his so

bright and promising

corporate career. Nevertheless, he is

a wonderful person, everyone knows him, and

he [applause] could, with great

ease, go into business. But

when Vladimir decides which city in

Russia he could start a business in,

do business in, he would never

choose Moscow, because he looks at

the ease-of-doing-business ranking, in which

Moscow holds a shameful

30th place among Russia's cities. And

Vladimir is with us today because in

our poin— in our program there are

provisions on how to move Moscow from that shameful 30th

place to a leading

position. How to make sure that all

leases, that all premises

belonging to the city, are visible

transparently. You go online, and you

can see at what price city-owned

premises are being rented out, and to whom. And

you can check whether they are

being subleased. Maybe someone

rents them from the city for 1,000 rubles, and then

simply subleases them for 3,000. Just as

happens with 95%

of all municipal premises. And in our

program there are provisions on how to make it

easier to connect to

the power grid. How to make it so

that it is easier to obtain

construction permits, so that in Moscow

business can develop. Thank you,

Vladimir, for joining us.

Oksana, a wonderful member of our team,

who is currently running our

presentation, and right now she is, uh,

hiding under the table and talking on

the phone.

She's a wonderful young woman, but she con—

she has a problem. The thing is, in

Oksana's courtyard there is a dark passageway,

and she has to walk through this dark passageway

to get around. In this dark passageway

someone regularly gets their bag snatched. And

Oksana is a wonderful young woman, but with a build like that,

well, all sorts of thugs apparently think

it's fairly easy to take her bag.

There is a camera in that, in that passageway,

but Oksana knows perfectly well that this camera

— she learned this from us at the

Anti-Corruption Foundation — was

installed after a secret tender was held

for the installation of cameras, in which

one single company won. And all the cameras that were

installed are either fake — just

dummy units — or they simply produce

no image at all. And we will replace them everywhere

where this can be changed.

And the experience of Singapore, Hong Kong, and London is

fully applicable in Moscow.

Thank you very much, Oksana, for being with us.

And to conclude this part, I would like

to say that for everyone on

this stage, and probably for everyone in this hall,

we all understand that it would be completely

hypocritical to say that

we can tweak things here,

adjust things there, put up cameras here, and

that something will change without

any political changes. That is

absolutely not the case. We understand that not

a single reform will work without the basic

political conditions. In Moscow

those who were actually elected must become deputies

(legislators). We need fair elections. All

residents must have the right to

hold any public events under a simple notification procedure

without prior permission. There must be no censorship in

Moscow's media. And everyone standing on

this stage, everyone in this hall, I

think we all believe and understand that

when we begin to implement this in

Moscow, we will implement it across all of Russia.

Change Russia, start with Moscow. That is our

practical slogan.

We know exactly what to do. We have

a program. Our task is to bring this

program to Muscovites. I am sure that

when we come to them with these

right words, we will get what

we want from Muscovites: support and

victory. So for us there are no make-believe

elections. We are entering these elections with complete

seriousness. The question of power in Russia and in

Moscow is absolutely serious for us. We

understand perfectly well that Putin, Sobyanin, and

all the rest of the Kremlin and Moscow

riffraff do not want to let us into

the elections. They are afraid to let us into

the elections. Whether they register us or not,

we will carry on this

election campaign until September 8 and

beyond, until we have brought these ideas to

everyone we want to reach. For us,

an election campaign is not

about interacting with the election

commission, but about interacting with

the voters. That is what we will be doing.

Once again, I thank everyone who came.

As of now, our volunteer groups have already

signed up 5,000 people. Our task is

to learn. We need these people, all of us

sitting here, to learn how to properly interact

with these 5,000, and there will be many more,

if we organize them properly, then

we will have such strength that

in the face of it, neither

censorship, nor administrative leverage, nor

falsification will mean anything. Friends, thank you

so much. We will definitely win.

Thanks a bunch.

And so we have come to assert our rights.

Yes.