#6033
[Second Issue of the Day]
#8
gazeta.ru
January 21, 2002
Communist Party Re-Registered
The Russian Communist Party has ceased to exist as a socio-political movement and has acquired the status of a political party. The Communists gathered in Moscow for their 8th extraordinary conference on Saturday, January 18, to amend their charter in order to accommodate the requirements of the new law on political parties.
The recently enacted law on political parties imposes stringent requirements to gain party status, without which political organisations cannot run in elections. Only political movements with more than 10 thousand members and a minimum of 100 members in each of at least 50 of Russia's 89 regions can register as a political party.
The new requirements have forced several parliamentary blocs to merge in order to survive. At the end of last year the centrist Fatherland-All-Russia merged with the pro-Kremlin Unity to form a new political party named United Fatherland.
Several movements, including the Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), led by the flamboyant Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the liberal Union of the Rightist Forces (SPS), the People Deputy’s Group, held conferences last year, whereat they amended their charters in order to re-register as political parties.
Although the sole purpose of the Communist Party’s gathering at the weekend was to reform in order to register as a political party, the Communist’s leader used the occasion to criticise the president and the government.
Communist Party chairman of many years Gennady Zyuganov delivered a lengthy speech in which he warned of impending economic disaster in Russia and harshly criticised President Putin and his government.
It is worth noting that Vladimir Putin greeted the conference with a telegram, in which he called the Communist Party “a large political union” and said he hoped that its activity “will be constructive and creative”.
The president’s gesture did nothing to quell Zyuganov’s caustic attack on the country’s leadership. He resolutely denounced the ruling regime as “anti-national”. According to Zyuganov’s estimations, by March the government will stop paying salaries to employees of budget-funded enterprises. He also predicted a major cadre reshuffle inside the government as early as in the 1st quarter of 2002.
“The situation in the country is extremely hard and it is deteriorating,” said Zyuganov. “If (the USSR President Mikhail) Gorbachev has gave up the (Communist) party and (ex-president Boris) Yeltsin for the sake of power dissolved the USSR, Putin is, in fact, giving away the geopolitical space of our thousand-year-old country. In the beginning of 2001 nobody could even have had a bad dream about the USA deploying military bases in the Central Asia.”
Other party members, however, adopted a friendlier tone towards the “ruling regime”.
Gennady Seleznyov, who is not only a regular Communist Party member, but also the chairman of the State Duma, said he could not agree with Zyuganov’s assessment of recent developments in Russia as genocide. Seleznyov said such charges were too ambiguous and simply not true.
The governor of the Kamchatka Region Mikhail Mashkovtsev went even further in criticising his more hard-line colleagues. He suggested that the party be more cooperative, develop cooperation with the president and the government because the Communists’ popularity in the regions has dropped recently and “people no longer vote for us”. Therefore, the party should be friendlier towards the contemporary rulers and in the meantime, it should foster a new presidential candidate, “a young, energetic, good person”. Then, in 2008 Mashkovtsev said the Communists would have a real chance to win the presidential elections. “There is no use to try in 2004”, he said, since “it is absolutely sure that Putin will keep the post for two terms.”
Zyuganov, however, appeared unruffled by his comrades’ reproaches. In a rare display of bonhomie he remarked, “Full unanimity is possible only in the cemetery”. But he had a reason to be cheerful: The conference had re-elected him as party chairman.
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