The liberal Yabloko Party, Russia’s only legal opposition party, has opened the door to the possibility of taking part in the March 2024 presidential elections, in which the current head of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, is likely to be re-elected.
“We hope to be able to count on the support of the people. If there is no popular support, it is not worth participating in the elections,” a Yabloko spokesperson told Spanish news agency EFE on Saturday.
Several popular initiatives, with which the party says it has nothing to do, have started collecting signatures for the party’s historic leader, Grigory Yavlinsky, to run for president.
Yavlinski, who has actively called for a ceasefire in Ukraine in recent months, says such initiatives must generate at least ten million signatures.
“This support should arise before the start of the election campaign,” the source said.
If the support is not in the order of ten million, the opposition politician will not participate in the elections, in which the Kremlin expects Putin to get more than 80% of the votes.
“If he presents himself as a candidate with a pacifist position and receives few votes next March, it would be a huge setback for people who are against war,” the spokesperson emphasized.
Yabloko will wait until mid-December, when the Senate must officially approve the date of the presidential election and Putin will announce his plans, to make a decision.
The candidacy must be confirmed at the party’s federal congress, which will elect its new leaders on December 9 and 10.
A month ago, 71-year-old Yavlinski met with Putin and asked him to accept a ceasefire agreement in Ukraine.
Yavlinski, a native of the neighboring country, believes that “it is necessary to start negotiations on ending hostilities as soon as possible,” and stressed his willingness to personally participate in the talks, Yabloko said at the time.
Known for his pacifist positions since the First Chechen War (1994-1996), Yabloko never supported the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014 and the same happened with the annexation, in September 2022, of four other Ukrainian regions (Donetsk, Lugansk ). , Kherson and Zaporiyia).
“For peace and freedom!” was the ‘slogan’ with which the liberal formation participated in the September municipal elections, refusing to campaign in the ‘new areas’.
Yavlinsky, who is at odds with jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, is clearly the opposition candidate most likely to be registered by the Central Election Commission.
The liberal leader was the third most supported opposition candidate in a survey conducted by Navalny-led organization the Russian Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) on those who are among the most critical of the Kremlin, after the former mayor of Yekaterinburg. , Yevgeny Roizman, and the editor of “Novaya Gazeta”, Dmitry Muratov.
In the 2000 presidential election, he was also the third candidate with the most votes, with 4.3 million votes, far from Putin’s nearly 40 million.
Source: DN
