| United Russia, the Liberal Democratic Party and Rodina
submitted a bill to the State Duma late Wednesday requiring political parties
to increase their membership from 10,000 to 50,000.
Critics said the legislation is an attempt by the Kremlin to clear the
political scene of all but a handful of loyal parties.
The bill would also require parties to have at least 500 members in
regional branches in more than half of the country's 89 regions. Party
branches currently must have 100 members or more.
In addition, branches in the remaining regions would have to have at
least 250 members.
The bill calls for an unspecified "transitional period for registered
political parties to bring their memberships up to 50,000." Parties
that fail would lose their status.
The Communist Party, which has some 500,000 members, is the only Duma
faction refusing to endorse the bill.
"We are afraid that the Kremlin is trying to artificially cut down
the number of parties to two," said Nikolai Sapozhnikov, deputy chairman
of the Duma's Credit Organizations and Financial Markets Committee.
"We do not have any membership problems, but many parties probably
would not be able to fulfill the criteria even if they had 10 years to
try," Sapozhnikov said Thursday. "A full spectrum of political
life will be cut out."
Oleg Kovalyov, a member of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party and chairman
of the Duma Management Committee, said the bill is part of a broader United
Russia effort to reform the whole political system.
"We support the abolition of single-mandate districts in favor
of deputies being elected on party lists, but before switching to this
new system we need to reform the way parties are created," Kovalyov
said.
"This bill will allow only a few but strong parties to remain,
and as a result the political system will be made stronger," he said.
President Vladimir Putin announced last month plans to eliminate individual
races in Duma elections and replace the popular vote for governors with
a system under which he submits gubernatorial nominations to regional
legislatures for their confirmation.
United Russia has 844,000 members, according to its web site.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, head of the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic
Party and a co-author of the bill, agreed with Kovalyov. He said it is
"ridiculous that parties without a real regional structure can aspire
to win parliamentary elections and, what's more, make it into the Duma,"
Interfax reported.
Zhirinovsky said his party has about 600,000 members.
The nationalist-populist Rodina party called the measure necessary "to
eliminate parties that have no ideology and no definite program."
Six parties are enough to represent the entire political spectrum, Rodina
spokesman Sergei Butin said.
Rodina has 37,000 members but plans to have 50,000 by year's end and
up to 150,000 next year, Butin said.
The bill will give the Kremlin even more control over the parties, said
Masha Lipman, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center.
"If the requirement is high, then it is harder for a party to meet
it and easier for the Kremlin to say, 'You have fake members,'" Lipman
said.
Liberal parties that did not make it into the Duma in last December's
elections expressed concern about the merits of the bill but downplayed
suggestions that it might lead to their demise.
"This bill will make the country resemble the Soviet Union, when
people were required to hold party cards," said Alexei
Melnikov, a former Duma deputy from Yabloko, which has 85,000 members.
Boris Nadezhdin, deputy head of the Union of Right Forces, said the
Kremlin "wants only a few parties" and stressed that "in
developed democratic countries there are no such requirements for parties."
Nadezhdin said his party has only 35,000 members but that should not
pose a problem. "Millions of people voted for us," he said.
"We'll be able to find a solution, but this [new rule] would mean
more work and organizational problems."
Among the other parties that did not made into the Duma are the People's
Party, with 120,000 members, and the Agrarian Party, with 60,000 members.
Kovalyov said the bill is likely to come up for a first reading by the
end of the year.
It is an amendment to the constitutional law and will require a two-thirds
majority vote to be approved. United Russia alone has two-thirds of the
seats in the Duma.
See also:
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