By Natalia Kostenko
Rules for parties
Party leaders will be elected for two terms. However the new rule will not apply to Vladimir Putin or Boris Gryzlov.
The initiative to establish party leadership rotation and reduce the minimum party size requirement comes from President Medvedev. According to Vladimir Pligin, Committee Chairman for Constitutional Legislation, the draft law instituting the above provisions has been prepared by the Presidential Executive Office and will be submitted to the Duma shortly. Mr Pligin, who participated in the consideration of the draft law last week, said that the size requirement for registering a party was to be reduced from 50,000 to 45,000 people, and within one to two years the limit would be further reduced to 30,000.
The draft law also stipulates that "one and the same person cannot head a permanent collegial governing body of a party or its regional branch for more than two consecutive terms," Mr Pligin said. Similar restrictions are applied to leaders of regional branches.
Out of the four parliamentary factions, only the Communist Party's leader Gennady Zyuganov will be directly affected by the new rule. Mr Zyuganov heads the Central Committee of the Communist Party, its permanent governing body. As for LDPR (Liberal-Democratic Party), its governing body is the Supreme Council, which, according to the party charter, does not have a formal head. The charter does say, however, that the party Chairman, i.e. Vladimir Zhrinovsky, is also the head of the Supreme Council. The same is the case with A Just Russia party, whose leader Sergei Mironov, among other responsibilities, also heads the Central Committee Presidium, which does not have a chairman.
Under the new rule, United Russia will only need to rotate its third man in the party hierarchy, Vyacheslav Volodin, Secretary of the General Council Presidium (party's governing body). The rule will not apply to the party Chairman Vladimir Putin and Supreme Council Head (consultative body) Boris Gryzlov.
Mr Pligin said that parties had been consulted in the process of drafting the law. Communists and Liberal-Democrats, however, deny their participation in such consultations. According to LDPR parliamentary party leader Igor Lebedev, the draft law is aimed against Mr Zhirinovsky and Mr Zyuganov - the patriarchs of party politics in Russia. Nevertheless, he said LDPR was in favour of the initiative and wanted to extend the application of the rule to ministers, governors, and other high ranking officials. The Communist Party's chief lawyer Vadim Solovyev said that his party was strongly opposed to state interference in party affairs. "If necessary, we will make amendments to the party charter to avoid having to rotate the party leader," he said.