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Our office has just been raided.
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At the office, I think, they seized all the lawyers' equipment.
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They trashed the whole place.
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[music]
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And I won't even get started on the candidates they've jailed.
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They barely get out of custody when
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they're dragged back into court again, and then
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into a special detention center. Do they really think we will
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put up with this? No, we will not. We will
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fight. For years we've been saying that they're all
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corrupt—every last one of them. It seems to me
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that you still don't understand the scale of it.
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But we will keep talking about it—frequently and at length—
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because they have completely lost all sense of limits. That's
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why.
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[music]
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To Moscow officials,
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we are second-class people. They can beat us,
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detain us unlawfully, and keep us in
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cells. They can ignore our votes
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and declare our signatures
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invalid. There's nothing new here.
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They see us as petty and
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annoying little people who are constantly
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demanding something, while they see themselves as important, great
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administrators entitled to so much.
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But have you ever wondered
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whether
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this divide can somehow be
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measured? Just out of curiosity—how many rights do we have,
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20–30 percent of a deputy's rights?
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If a deputy is paid 500,000 rubles a month
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(about $5,400 USD), how much should a
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teacher be paid? Or a doctor? In other words, how many times
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more important
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and more deserving than us do they think they are? Very interesting. I have
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the answer: exactly 15. Let me explain. The Moscow
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City Duma is a body that, among other things,
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sets by law
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the social housing norm.
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That is, the deputies meet, think about
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us Muscovites, and decide: 18 square meters (about 194 square feet)—that
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is the current figure. So, 18
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square meters per person is considered enough to live on.
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All clear? Remember that. Now let's look
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at the conditions in which the deputies themselves—those
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who pass these laws for us—live.
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We don't have to look far. Let's start with the
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top person in the Moscow City
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Duma, its chairman, Alexei
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Shaposhnikov. Shaposhnikov has spent his whole life
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in politics.
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Since the early 2000s, he has been a functionary
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for United Russia (the Kremlin-backed ruling party).
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He worked in the State Duma secretariat.
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Shaposhnikov is running in the election in
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the Sviblovo and Medvedkovo districts, which are
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right by the MKAD (Moscow Ring Road), on the very edge of Moscow. But
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Shaposhnikov prefers to live somewhere else—
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in this building, right in the city center.
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22 Zoologicheskaya Street.
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It's not far from the Garden Ring
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and the Moscow Zoo—a wonderful neighborhood.
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His apartment is located somewhere here
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and takes up the top two floors: a seven-room penthouse.
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Its area is
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270 square meters (about 2,906 square feet), worth 95
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million rubles (about $1 million USD), and another 1.5 million rubles
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(about $16,000 USD) for the underground garage. According
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to the declaration published on the website, he lives
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there alone. He has no spouse, and his daughter
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lives elsewhere. Now let's take
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the area of the Moscow City Duma chairman's apartment—
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Shaposhnikov's 270 square meters—and divide it
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by the norm for one person,
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18 square meters, and we get exactly 15.
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Shaposhnikov lives 15 times better and is treated as 15 times more deserving
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than the average Muscovite.
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Do we agree that
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Shaposhnikov is 15 times better than us, that he works 15
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times better, brings 15 times more benefit,
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and
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needs 15 times more square meters
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to live? No. Shaposhnikov is worse than us.
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He is a harmful, deceitful deputy, and somehow he came up with
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100 million rubles (about $1.1 million USD) for a penthouse from who knows where.
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In his place there could be
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a normal, independent deputy.
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In his place there should be a normal,
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independent deputy. And now, the good
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news:
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If you live in Sviblovo, North Medvedkovo, or
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South Medvedkovo,
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you personally can make sure that
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Shaposhnikov is not in the next convocation.
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Register on the Smart Voting website,
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and we will send you the name
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of the person who has the best chance
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of beating Shaposhnikov.
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On September 8, you will need to come and
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vote. Let Shaposhnikov go on doing whatever he wants,
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even if he keeps wandering alone
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from room to room in his own
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270-square-meter penthouse—but he
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should not be in the Moscow City Duma.
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If you live in other districts of Moscow,
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register for Smart Voting anyway.
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In every district, we will identify
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an alternative candidate, and each of
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you will be able, in the September 8 election, to seriously
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upset United Russia.