MOSCOW, December 9 (Itar-Tass) — The organisers of the rally against the forging of election results, which is scheduled for December 10, could not reach agreement with the authorities on Thursday about the place where it is going to be held and about the number of participants. After the incident in the Chistye Prudy park, the social networks were filled with appeals to come and attend the protest action on Saturday. Two days before the planned protest rally against vote rigging at the Duma elections the Moscow authorities decided to change the place, where it is going to be held, from the Revolution Square to the Bolotnaya Square. Previously the organisers of the rally came up with their own suggestion: nor to change the place, but to increase the area for the rally at the Revolution Square at the expense of parking lots.
Talks about the place for the rally were going on all through Thursday, The Kommersant writes in an article, entitled “Second round of elections.” The application for its holding was submitted before the Duma elections by Sergey Udaltsov, coordinator of the Left Front, his wife Anastasia Udaltsova and Nadezhda Mitryushkina, a Solidarity activist. An action with the participation of 300 people was agreed upon for December 6. After the incident in the Chistye Prudy park on December 5 and in the Triumfalny Square on December 6 it became clear that thousands of people could take part in the rally. Some 9,000 people took part in the first two protest actions.
The rally, scheduled for Saturday, may become the first massive action in Russia, organised through social networks – Twitter, Facebook and VKontakte, the newspaper writes. Yandex made a map, on which 74 cities are indicated, where protest actions against vote rigging are planned to be held. The map shows the place, where a protest action is planned to be held, and gives the name of the social network, which invites those who wish to take part in it. “The Internet became the main instrument of communication in big cities,” said Rustem Adagamov, a popular blogger. The fact that the number of potential participants in the rally is running into tens of thousands shows that people do not agree with the election results, and not professional opposition members, but ordinary people – intellectuals, managers, who never before attended political meetings.”
The protesters are going to demand the cancellation of the results of the December 4 elections and the institution of criminal proceedings against those who are guilty of vote rigging. Speakers at the rally are going t insist on the immediate release of those who were arrested at the protest actions held on December 4 to 7.
Preparations for the Saturday rally are going on in the social networks, the Novye Izvestia reports. Some 27,000 people reported in Facebook that they would take part in the protest action, and another 9,000 do not rule out such a possibility. A total of 14,000 people reported in VKontakte their intention to come to the rally, and 21,000 people wrote they were “potential participants.” It is quite probable that the same people write in both networks, but still it is clear already that very many people will take part in the protest action.