| The State Duma on Wednesday approved a Kremlin-backed
bill requiring political parties to have 50,000 registered members, an
increase from 10,000.
By a vote of 360 to 62, with two abstentions, deputies gave a first
reading to the bill, which was sponsored by the pro-Kremlin United Russia
majority, the nationalist Rodina and the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic
Party factions.
The bill requires parties to have branches of at least 500 members in
more than half of the country's 89 regions, and branches of at least 250
members in the other regions.
Under existing law, parties are required to have at least 100 members
per regional branch.
Under the bill, existing political parties will have until Jan. 1, 2006,
to register the minimum number of members.
Parties that fail to register enough members would lose their status
and would not be able to run in the 2007 Duma elections, said United Russia
Deputy Sergei Popov, presenting the bill to the chamber.
Out of 44 registered political parties, 23 took part in last December's
Duma elections. Only four parties -- United Russia, the Communists, Rodina
and LDPR -- made it past the 5 percent barrier in the party vote to enter
the Duma, while most of the rest gained less than 1 percent of the vote.
Liberal parties Yabloko and the Union of Right-Wing Forces, or SPS,
failed to clear the 5 percent hurdle.
"Many of these parties are totally obscure, lacking any ideology,"
Popov said. "But when they ran in the Duma elections they enjoyed
free airtime on television and spent budget funds, which they often do
not bother to return."
Communist Deputy Valentin Romanov warned that the bill would lead to
the gradual elimination of the multiparty system and further domination
of the Duma by the pro-Kremlin United Russia party.
The Communist faction was the only one not to support the bill Wednesday.
The Communist Party, with about 500,000 members, is one of the few parties
that will not be affected by the change.
United Russia, according to its official web site, has more than 800,000
members.
The LDPR, founded in 1990, has about 600,000 members, party leader Vladimir
Zhirinovsky has said.
Yabloko says it has 85,000 members, while SPS claims about 35,000 members.
The parties' membership bill, an amendment to the 2001 law On Political
Parties, needs to be approved by the Federation Council before it can
be signed into law by President Vladimir Putin.
The Duma voted last month for a bill promoted by the Kremlin to replace
the popular vote for governors with a system under which president submits
gubernatorial nominations to regional legislatures for confirmation.
A vote on a Putin-backed plan to eliminate single-mandate district races
in the Duma elections is also due soon.
See also:
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