Prominent Yabloko Members Quit Party

[mastodon]

from Gazeta.ru:

Prominent Yabloko Members Quit Party

A group of Yabloko members announced on Monday that they had decided to leave the ‘party of the intelligentsia.’ The defectors said they had were “ashamed” of the party “that has turned into a mechanism for deceiving decent people.”

Opening a news conference on Monday, the State Duma deputy Vyacheslav Igrounov and former deputy chairman of the Yabloko and the former leader of the party’s Moscow branch, said that Yabloko had been formed with the aim of taking part in the running of the state.

But as time went by, Igrounov said, Yabloko had become “a team for servicing the unrealised ambitions of one person” and “a mechanism for deceiving of honest people”. Vyacheslav Igrounov and his comrades said they considered it shameful to remain members of such a party.

Alexander Landau, who used to work in the party’s administration, stated that at now the party “works not for the state, but for self-preservation”.

And the former chairman of the inspection commission of the Moscow branch Alexei Kuzmin stated that Yabloko, “which has always been the party of intellectuals, has committed class betrayal” and “herded itself into an electoral ghetto”… “I no longer consider Yabloko a place for a decent person,” Kuzmin concluded.

Journalists asked the Yabloko defectors to shed more light on the roots of the conflict between them and Grigory Yavlinsky, Yabloko’s leader.

Vyacheslav Igrounov confessed he had had deep disagreements with Yavlinsky since 1993 but neither of them had ever made their controversies public before. But after the Yabloko leader concentrated all his efforts on the creation of a one-leader party, an irreconcilable rift became inevitable, Igrounov said.

“The way a party is organized, is the way in which it would run the state,” ex-deputy chairman of Yabloko explained.

The defectors do not, however, have common plans.

Alexei Kuzmin, said that by leaving Yabloko he had abandoned the first and, most probably, the only political party in his life.

The former leader of Yabloko’s youth organization Andrei Sharomov said he would “engage in concrete business,” something he did not have the opportunity to do as a Yabloko member. To begin with, he plans to unite his associates through the world wide web.

The State Duma deputy Vyacheslav Igrounov said he has no plans of leaving politics and he will remain a member of the Yabloko faction in the State Duma, because he says an independent deputy is less effective than a member of a Duma faction. Igrounov added that he has no intention to continue attempts and resolve his relationship with the Yabloko leadership, and will simply not enter into further squabble.

Yabloko press service responded to Igrounov’s statements without delay. Later on Monday Sergei Mitrokhin, the Yabloko party secretary in charge of ideology and a State Duma deputy, issued a statement in which he claimed that Igrounov’s actions of late were “a morbid reaction to the reform of the party”, in the course of which he, who was once a “party builder” had turned into a common party member. After “the party unanimously showed him the door”, Mitrokhin claimed, Igrounov “took up service with the Kremlin PR-technologists” and “was given an opportunity to defame Yabloko in the mass media”… “All his charges are lies. And I can prove that,” deputy Mitrokhin said in his statement.

[davlet]

Quite sad Between the communists, the fascists and the ex-KGB men, Yabloko has been the only party worth voting for...

D.P.

[mastodon]

This is very unfortunate, but I am hoping that the party underlings take a firmer role and fill the void left by the giants like Kuzmin and Sharomov.

[Ragnvald]

This is a sad news.
I stated once that when Yabloko becomes a Russia's ruling party, it would mean that Russia has completed its transformation into free democratic country.

But, I firmly believe that Yabloko will live.

[Ronald_Barbour]

Dear Rags:

I agree! I've read the party's platform, and it appears not unlike the U.S. Republican Party official stand.

--Ronbo