There are plans afoot to get rid of President Putin. At least this is what the leader of the liberal Yabloko party Grigory Yavlinsky told a news briefing in the lower house on Thursday. Next week, Yavlinsky said, he plans
to meet with Putin ''to discuss the problem''.
At the briefing formally dedicated to the results of the Duma's spring session, Yabloko's leader, who has been media-shy for a long time, willingly
answered almost all questions posed by journalists.
Mr. Yavlinsky, how do you assess the initiative of the Union of Rightist Forces (SPS) to nominate a single candidate for the presidential elections in 2004?
We assess it positively, and we fully agree with the proposal and are ready to discuss it sometime in September-October, possibly at a joint conference,
where all representatives of democratic forces will be invited. We have no intention, of course, of spending all the time that remains discussing the matter, but we do agree with the idea. However, there are some things we still do not understand.
What is the point in discussing the issue more than 18 months before the elections? The suggestion that the initiative is aimed at ensuring a democratic candidate scores more votes than a communist candidate and thus not allowing the communist to enter the run-off does not stand up to criticism.
It is also unclear, what methods the initiators are willing to apply to influence the outcome of the run-off. It is known that both (SPS leaders Anatoly) Chubais and (Sergei) Kiriyenko are going to challenge Putin and are
interested in his removal. The only thing we did not know before is that Kiriyenko and Chubais wanted to replace him with Nemtsov. And so how do they
think they will even get to the run-off?
On Monday I will be meeting the president and we will discuss the problem. Although, I emphasize, we fully support the idea of nominating a single democratic candidate for the presidential elections.
If you receive the proposal to be nominated as the single democratic candidate, will you accept?
You know, in the present conditions such proposals are endless. It would not
be the first time that I took part in elections and I know where such proposals lead. I will not play the part of a puppet and will not participate in all those games of controlled democracy.
The spring session in the State Duma is nearing an end. How would you assess
its work?
>From the standpoint of our faction the decisions passed by the lower house
throughout this spring session have been counter-productive. A simple
example
is the law on citizenship denying citizens of the former Soviet republics
the
prospect of entering Russia.
Before the second reading of the draft bill on citizenship Yabloko introduced an amendment allowing elderly parents, whose children are Russian citizens, to be granted Russian citizenship upon application, giving elderly people the opportunity to live with their children. But before the third reading the approved amendment was rejected. Yabloko intends to ask the Constitutional Court to cancel the decision adopting that law.
Our compatriots abroad have, in fact, been given a message by the government
that drafted the citizenship law: ''Don't bother coming to Russia.'' This, incidentally, contradicts Vladimir Putin's statement whereby he said that we
must accept no less than 50 million migrants.
The same message is given to young men, willing to do the alternative civil service (instead of going to the army). The law on alternative civil service
is, in fact, a straightforward declaration by the state of: ''You can pack and leave.''
Here in Russia nobody is interested in realizing his or her intellectual or professional potential. Besides, in a state where everyone wallows in corruption, a third, and even a fourth (presidential) term will be considered a formality. And it can be no other way. Look at France. In a country where the same president rules for fourteen years, even among his acquaintances, there is no one who won't steal.
In Russia there are three principles at work: ''Do not enter, go away, and long live corruption!'' That is why I assess the Duma's work as ineffectual.
Even in the only matter in which Yabloko supports the state authorities, the
foreign policy of our country, the Duma has proved impotent. The house does not discuss foreign policy matters. Politicians, in the good sense of the word, and not those who pursue their personal ambitions, have nothing left to do in this Duma. And besides, there are almost none of them left here.
Can something unpredictable happen in the State Duma before the parliamentary elections that will make deputies change their behaviour?
The Duma will not change. People who have set up the system have no wish to discuss anything with anyone. Therefore, it is so important to explain to the voters that this Duma deserves no support. On some issues it takes downright
reactionary decisions.
Yabloko disagrees with the government not only on citizenship, but also on the alternative civil service and on nuclear waste imports. How can you assess the work of the executive branch in general?
In essence the government and the president should be the architects of the system. And the task of the government is to ensure that people live a better life, to correct things and write laws. But we must be duly informed of laws
being elaborated at least one or two years in advance. This does not happen.
Instead, laws are drawn up overnight, and officials submit ideas to the lower house that occur to them at the last moment.
You have spoken many times of the problem of moral and political censorship.
Is there a legislative solution that could separate one from the other?
Political censorship is widely practiced nowadays. Certain subjects cannot be discussed on state-run TV channels. Even though this is a violation of the Constitution, censored information today is the rule. Everyone knows how the
news flow is censored on the 1st and 2nd channels. The system whereby a state official calls the channel management and says: ''This may be shown, and this may not,'' works at its full capacity.
Or, take a serious problem like defamation. Our media display an unwillingness to present truthful information, intentionally distorting it.
Have you noticed what has happened with newspapers? I can tell you how people in the provinces react to all-Russian papers. Many residents tell me that they do not know how to tell a 'bought' paper from an 'unbought' one and refuse to read federal papers altogether. For instance, in Kirov they read only the local press.
In places where they do not watch TV and do not read the all-Russian 'bought' press, the Communist Party enjoys high levels of support. In connection with
the recent developments in the Communist Party, what do you think the chances are of Gennady Seleznyov's Rossia movement taking the niche from the moderate social democrats?
There is no chance. Today, one-third of Russia's population, nearly 30 million people, vote for the CPRF. What niche can there be? As long as there
is such a great number of poor, as long as the state functions as it does, the CPRF will always be there. Their voters in the regions, on the contrary,
hailed the expulsion of Seleznyov, Goryacheva and Gubenko. At last, they said, there will be some order. The communists have their programme, and 30 million people are content with it: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and their younger brother Gennady Zyuganov. This is their entire programme. As Sergei Ivanenko once told me, communism will live on. After all, it has lived for two thousand years.