Moscow Times - 12.03.2001

 

The Moscow Times

Unity-Fatherland Super Party Is Born

By Natalia Yefimova
Staff Writer

After months of courtship and several bouts of cold feet, the pro-Kremlin Unity movement and its allies from the Fatherland-All Russia bloc gathered Saturday for the founding congress of their new party -- All-Russian Unity and Fatherland -- a rigidly structured organization likely to dominate the national political scene in the coming few years.

Party leaders addressing more than 3,200 delegates at the Kremlin Palace of Congresses said the new party, called Unified Russia for short, would strive to consolidate society, reject all forms of radicalism and support a "socially responsible" market economy and a strong government headed by President Vladimir Putin.

"We espouse a pragmatic combination of boldness and caution, of tradition and energetic innovation," said Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, who was elected one of the three chairmen of the party's Higher Council.

While Unity and those who have joined forces with the movement have often been called "the party of power" because of their tendency to toe the Kremlin line and because of their influential members, a different idea was reiterated by all of the most prominent speakers at the founding congress, including Putin, who showed up for about 30 minutes before the noon break: Don't call yourself the party of power until you've earned the title; strive instead to be the party of the majority.

"To declare yourself the party of power would be rash," Putin cautioned his audience.

"Today Russia needs parties that ... will consistently defend the rights and interests of the citizens. Only then will you truly be able to become the party of the majority," said the president. After a pause, he added: "I hope your party is up to this task."

With a wave of their ID cards, the delegates passed two documents -- a very general party program and the new party's charter, which establishes a rigid administrative structure compared by many to that of the Soviet-era Communist Party.

The program, still a work-in-progress, does little more than outline four basic principles advocated by the party: freedom, rule of law, fairness and consensus.

The 30-page charter, on the other hand, meticulously details the powers of each of the party's five ruling bodies, as well as the rights and obligations of members and the rules for nominating candidates -- one of the party's most important functions in the run-up to the 2003 parliamentary elections and the presidential race set for the following year.

Under the law on political parties passed earlier this year, only those organizations that go through the complicated procedure of re-registering as parties -- a legal status that has not existed up until now -- will be able to nominate candidates for elections to any government office.

Presenting the charter, Alexander Bespalov, the new chairman of Unified Russia's General Council, said that more than 1,600 amendments had been incorporated into the original draft, making it "clearer and stricter."

In addition to approving the two documents, the delegates -- assisted by rosy-cheeked college students in blue and white neckties -- voted at special electronic consoles on the make-up of the party's various governing bodies. The quickest vote was for the somewhat decorative Higher Council, chaired by Luzhkov, the head of Fatherland; Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu, who heads Unity; and Tatarstan President Mintimir Shaimiyev of the All-Russia movement. This 18-member group, which includes Olympic stars Alexander Karelin and Alina Kabayeva, is the party's public face, but true power lies with Bespalov's 13-member General Council -- which snickering delegates quietly compared to the Communist-era Politburo.

Political analysts called Bespalov an ally of the security and defense officials "imported" by Putin from St. Petersburg. And they interpreted his appointment to the key post of General Council chairman as a sign that, for the time being, the Petersburg siloviki had gotten the upper hand over the political elite formed under Putin's predecessor Boris Yeltsin -- the other group fighting to influence the president's decisions.

"The opposition [between these two groups] exists along various lines -- both in the fight for the ministries and for various political resources, including the State Duma," Andrei Ryabov of the Moscow Carnegie Center said in an interview Friday. Without a doubt, Ryabov added, Unified Russia was also "a focus of this battle."

Since its inception in the run-up to last year's presidential election, the new party's core, the Unity movement, has been perceived as a faceless, amorphous organism that simply does the Kremlin's bidding. And delegates at Saturday's congress were well aware of this.

"We must not become a thoughtless voting machine," Duma Deputy Oleg Morozov warned his colleagues. Alexander Zhukov, head of the Duma's budget and tax committee, added that the new party must "articulate a clear position and offer the government alternative plans of action."

Ryabov said Unified Russia was not likely to support the president absolutely blindly because other powerful interest groups would exert pressure on separate factions within the party.

But the lack of a common ideology was evident not only from the ambiguous party platform. It shone through the irreconcilable phrases with which speakers opened and closed their addresses -- from "dear comrades" to "may God bless you!"

Kremlin-connected political analyst Sergei Markov said that, in order to win the support of the majority of Russians, the new party would need to develop its own ideology.

Ryabov agreed that the party's ideological vacuum was a weak point.

"If the president's position in society and political circles starts to grow weaker," he said, "there is little that can save the party from internal erosion."