"Segodnya", Tuesday, December 26, 2000, p.2

THERE WILL BE LESS PARTIES

The Kremlin and the Central Election Commission are lobbying a new law on parties

by Avtandil TSULADZE

YESTERDAY information agencies received the information that Vladimir Putin had introduced into the State Duma a bill "On political parties" prepared by the Central Election Commission (CEC). However, the press office of the State Duma has informed "Segodnya" that the bill was presented to the chamber by the head of the CEC Alexandr Veshnyakov only for information before today's meeting of the leaders of the Duma factions with the president. There are three more alternative bills in the Duma, but according to our information Putin likes the CEC's bill better, and therefore it has the highest chances to be adopted. According to this bill, the parties are planned to be put in such conditions that only: a) giant parties (i.e. Communist Party), b) parties that are fully loyal to the power - will be able to survive.

The following restrictions are introduced: the parties must have regional organizations in more than a half of subjects of the Federation, there must be not less than 10 thousand members in the party. The further the more: registration of regional organizations must be carried out not later than in three months after the registration of the party itself; the party can be liquidated if it doesn't participate in the elections for five years; the social political union can be transformed into the party not earlier than a year after the registration of the union etc. True, the present political unions are given a two years delay to comply with all this requirements. Those who will pass the examination, will receive something from the power. The representative of the Chief State and Law Agency (GGPU) of the president of the Russian Federation informed "Interfax" that the bill provides the state financing of the parties according to the results of the election. These expenses will be included into the budget. The

party will have to get not less than 3% votes in order to get the financing. If a representative of a party wins the presidential election he must suspend his membership.

The meaning of this reorganization was expressed very clearly by the deputy to the State Duma Vladimir Ryzhkov in the TV program "Hero of the Day". He called this law "a cartel division of the party market" between existing monopolists. In somewhat other terms the same idea was expressed by the political technologist Gleb Pavlovsky. He defines the bill proposed by the CEC as an intermediate variant reducing political risks. But the greatest risk is that in the result of such trancformation we get, according to the expression of Vladimir Ryzhkov, "a partyist bureaucratic model" that doesn't provide active participation of the society in the political life.