Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 31 – A convoy of 200
striking long-haul truckers who left Moscow 11 days ago has arrived in
Yekaterinburg as part of an all-Russia tour that will take them to cities in
Siberia and the Russian Far East and at a protest there not only called for the
end to the Plato fee system, the reason for the strike originally, but for the
election of a new Russian president.
The truckers, who held their
demonstration today not on the highway but in a park in the center of the city
where they put up all their protest signs, say they want to nominate Andrey
Bazhutin, the president of the Couriers Union of Russia, to be president of the
country (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=597EE6E9E9317
and sobkorr.ru/news/597EE6E9E9317.html).
Speakers at today’s
meeting said, the Kasparov portal reported “that practically everything in the
country is now prohibited and that it is very difficult to get approval for a
convoy.” In this way, they signaled that the labor action of the drivers “has
become a protest not only against Plato but also against the ineffective policy
of the state.”
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