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Moskovsky Komsomolets, June 20, 2002

Nemtsov Puts Everything at Stake and Yavlinsky Sets His Sights on Becoming a Minister

By Alexander Budverg

On Friday morning, a mini-conference of the "most bourgeois" party - the Union of Right-Wing Forces (SPS) - will open at a luxury hotel in central Moscow. This will be a mini-conference because formally this party gathering is called the council of the party. Representatives of all the regions, all the members of the Duma faction, and all the leaders will be present. The SPS leader Boris Nemtsov is going to propose two major innovations, which are supposed to change not only the SPS, but the entire right-wing opposition.

The first novelty will shock the party organisation men. Now they will have to assume e obligations - how many percent they are going to win during elections. The more you suppose to win, the higher you stand on the party list. Thus you have a better chance to get into the Duma. But only if you fulfil your obligations.

Nemtsov believes that this is needed to make party members do their best at the elections. He is going to assume such an obligation himself, and if he does not carry it out, he will resign from the post of party leader. The obligations involved have not been disclosed. There are two variants for determining "individual occupations". The first is a voluntary one. You choose for yourself, realizing that if your aspirations are low, you will let your colleagues have a place in the Duma, if your aspirations are too high, you can kicked out. The second variant is a certain percentage, for example, reached at the previous elections. In this case, there should be a common lowering index. This is connected with the fact that democratic parties have always lost a bit at each successive election.

It still remains unclear if the party members will agree with Boris Nemtsov’s proposal, especially as nobody knows what would happen if all members obtain less support than they had promised. You cannot sack everyone. So the party will get a powerful leverage for controlling party staff.

The second initiative of Nemtsov is no less revolutionary, and it concerns all liberal parties. He suggests that such parties should propose candidates for president. There is nothing new in this idea. The novelty consists in the following. The party which gains the maximum votes will have a right to propose a candidate, and the other parties will have to support this candidate. Notably the Union of Right-Wing Forces, for example, if they gain the maximum number of voices, can propose any candidate and not necessarily one of their party leaders. According to the party leaders, this will let us escape from the alternative Putin - Zyuganov, which we are already tired of.

Evidently Nemtsov himself does not want to compete with Vladimir Putin in 2004. It is interesting that the idea of t so-called "primaries" has been strongly opposed by one of the likely candidates: Grigory Yavlinsky. Sources in his staff have been saying that he may soon be appointed Foreign Minister, which means he has no time to consider Nemtsov's silly ideas. Yet we have the impression that this appointment is just an invention of Yavlinsky's PR people, who are trying to use it to explain his reluctance to cooperate with the SPS. Moreover, Yabloko does not have good chances.

See also:

Presidential Elections 2004

Yabloko and SPS

Moskovsky Komsomolets, June 20, 2002

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