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Of: TT
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Photo: Andrej Fatejev / Aleksej Navalnyjs stab / AP / TT
Alexei Navalny, next to Kseniya Fadeyeva, hoping to get a position in the Tomsk City Council. The photo was taken just days before Navalny was poisoned in August.
The poisoning of Alexei Navalny could be a revelation for the residents of Siberian Tomsk ahead of the elections this weekend, opposition figures expect.
This is where the opposition leader campaigned against corrupt rulers just before he fell ill.
Kseniya Fadeyeva was one of the last people Navalny met in Tomsk before boarding a plane to Moscow and then falling seriously ill.
– After the poisoning, I was in shock for two days, she says.
Fadeyeva is a Navalny allied candidate in the Tomsk City Council elections, where voting begins on Sunday. Tomsk was the last stop on a tour of Siberia where the opposition leader tried to instill courage in his supporters and allied candidates.
During the trip, Navalny also recorded movie clips accusing several of the United Russia candidates in local and regional elections of corruption and abuse of power.
Well distributed movie clips
Jelena Basova, 33, who works as a vendor in Tomsk, was initially unsure whether it was true that Navalny was poisoned there. Then, like millions of other people, she watched the movie clips that she posted online.
– Everything was clear to me, he says, and he tells the AFP envoy that he will vote in favor of the Navalny movement in the elections.
– He was poisoned because he fights for the truth.
The Russian candidates in Tomsk, which has just over half a million inhabitants, are singled out in Navalny’s films as a kind of mob. The deputies are accused of having transferred municipal activities to their own, private companies and Navalny tries to explain it, among other things, by showing how much of the money from an electricity bill ends up in the pockets of politicians.
In the clip, he also drives around Tomsk along with Ksenija Fadejeva, who says she hopes many will go to vote.
When campaigning in the streets of the city, he receives congratulations from some passers-by, but many just walk past, notes AFP.
Feeling of helplessness
Mitja Nemtsev, a volunteer for the Navalny movement campaign in Tomsk, says the hardest thing is to get apathetic voters excited.
– People have told themselves that they are powerless, he says.
– There is a perception that politics is dirty. But it’s wrong, the local authorities can fix things, like in Khabarovsk.
In Khabarovsk, in the Russian Far East, residents have been demonstrating for two months, sometimes tens of thousands. They oppose the arrest of their popular governor, who defeated the United Russia candidate and was later charged with crimes on questionable grounds.
Opposition to the central power in Moscow is greatest in Siberia and the Far East. Viktor Muchnik, editor-in-chief of the pro-opposition TV channel TV2 in Tomsk, notes that many Tomsk residents have relatives who were deported or executed under Tsarist or Soviet rule.
– This plays a role in our relationship with Moscow. But I wouldn’t say the opposition’s chances are good, he says.
Governor elections are held in 18 provinces and territories, eleven local parliamentary elections, and local government elections in 22 regional capitals over the weekend. Voting ends on Sunday.
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