The United Russia party will hold its regular congress in St Petersburg on November 21. The Congress will answer the question of who its leaders will be and what its platform will be when it enters the next "grand" elections.
The rumour circulating in the State Duma has it that the planned rotation of the governing bodies - the Supreme Council, the General Council, the Central Executive Committee of United Russia - will spring some surprises: the party will get rid of its "founding fathers": Sergei Shoigu, Yuri Luzhkov and Mintimer Shaimiyev. Allegedly the "heavyweights" are going to be dumped because the Prime Minister and the President are displeased with Shaimiyev and Luzhkov, and Shoigu will be kicked out "for good measure."
However, the party leaders doubt that such a thing is possible. "It may be a canard or a provocation," Deputy Duma Speaker Lyubov Sliska believes. "I don't know anything of the sort," echoes deputy head of the parliamentary United Russia, Valery Ryazansky. Our sources in the President's Executive Office also claim that these are just rumours and that in the crisis year the party has more pressing problems on its hands than high-profile personnel reshuffles.
Strategy and personnel
"I don't think that the Congress will produce any political sensations because the party leadership is focused on anti-crisis work," says State Duma deputy Ruslan Kondratov.
The Kremlin does not hide the fact that rotation of old regional bosses will continue, as witnessed by the recent dismissal of Eduard Rossel. But rotation will be gradual. Most importantly, personnel issues should not overshadow the highlight of the Congress, i.e. the report by the party's leader Vladimir Putin on further anti-crisis measures.
"I think the party leader's speech will be built around the measures that need to be taken in the social and economic sphere," says Ruslan Kondratov. "Putin is expected to outline a strategy that would put Russia in a position of leadership in the post-crisis world," says deputy-director of the Social Systems Institute, Dmitry Badovsky.
In fact the Presidential Address was also devoted to the modernisation strategy. Would Putin be content with repeating what Medvedev had already said? If not, the topic of renewing the party personnel may well come to the fore, Profil's sources in the party structures fear.
The Supreme Council will be reformed. According to its head, Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov, the Congress would downsize its currently 68-strong Council. "The scheme will evolve in the following way: we elect a certain number of Supreme Council members and then, based on the results of regional elections, we will propose the top leaders who made the best showing in the elections," he said. This is a way of motivating prominent party members. As a rule, the party list is headed either by the governor or the speaker of the regional legislature. As a result, the Supreme Council may become a truly effective body.
In addition, the Congress will discuss and adopt amendments to the Charter and the Programme. The UR Charter will provide for internal party primaries in the elections of all levels and mandatory participation in debates, also at all levels, from the elections of a village council to elections for the State Duma.
Putin and Party
The Congress will not be only about the reform of its governing bodies. "The party's future ultimately depends on whether Putin decides to become a card-carrying member and whether he will run for presidency in 2012 as a party nominee," thinks Dmitry Badovsky, "That is, whether the supreme power body will become a partisan one. Whether the UR will become the governing party or simply the party in government."
"The topic of the 2012 presidential election will anyway be discussed at the Congress or at least on its fringes, especially since the party will play the leading role in the elections," says Ruslan Kondratov. "However, this Congress is unlikely to decide which candidate should be nominated for president: the party has two such candidates at the moment." The fact that President Medvedev has also been invited to the Congress indirectly bears out that assessment.
Be that as it may, Vladimir Putin continues his slow but steady drift towards a party prime minister. Some observers note that he no longer meets with members of the parliamentary opposition before the cameras, as he did until recently. In the opinion of Yevgeny Minchenko, director-general of Russia's International Institute of Political Expertise, Putin is moving away from the image of a politician above the party system and is positioning himself as the leader of one party.
At a meeting with the secretary of the UR General Council, Vyacheslav Volodin, on November 6 Putin pointedly mentioned the image of the UR: "It is very important that the party structures should be as close to their voters as possible, that the party should not turn into a party of bureaucrats and should protect the interests not of bureaucrats and civil servants but the interests of ordinary Russian citizens."
Such advice should be given by the party leader and not by a prime minister who is above parties. True, during the meeting the prime minister, whose memory seldom fails him, made a slip which shows that he does not yet fully inhabit the role of the leader of the party which has chosen him as its banner. "It is very important that the United Russia party be represented in all the constituent entities, in the majority of the country's regions," Vladimir Putin told his fellow party member firmly. In the presence of journalists, Volodin did not dare to remind the leader that the party is already represented in all the regions and constituent entities of the Russian Federation. Even so, observers have concluded that it can't be long before the prime minister accepts a party member's card. "He will certainly do it, if not at the coming Congress, then at the next one," a source in the government staff told Profil.
If this is the way in which the situation will develop, political analysts predict that Russia will move closer to a model in which a parliamentary majority government formed on the results of the elections and a party president will coexist. In that case the party should become similar to what Valery Ryazansky describes: a structure with rigorous organisation rather than "an interest club." But at the same time it would have intraparty democracy, discussion forums, etc. If such a model is established, the UR may well evolve into something similar to the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) after the war: it dominated the political system in the FRG for about twenty years until society was sufficiently developed for strong left-wing and social-democratic parties to emerge.
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Since the Public Reception Offices of the party leader Vladimir Putin were opened in September 2008, they have received 232,763 persons.
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Quote: The president delivered his address on the eve of our 11th Congress. Undoubtedly, the ways to implement the address will be discussed at the Congress, including in connection with our policy document. We have invited the president to take part in the Congress and we are convinced that his participation will enable United Russia to better organise its work in the future."
Boris Gryzlov, Chairman of United Russia Supreme Council
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The UR has more than 1.5 million members: 60.3% are women and 39.7% are men. 59% of the party members are salary earners, followed by 17.6% blue collar workers; 6.3% are pensioners, 5.5% are students and 3.8% are businessmen. Of the total party membership, 30.5% work in industry, 28.1% in the sphere of education, 10.2% in healthcare, 6.7% in agriculture and 5.8% are cultural and art workers. 9.6% are civil servants and 8.7% work in government executive bodies.
Mikhail Vinogradov