Izvestia: "One more week for Popular Front candidates"
On July 6, United Russia will apply to the Popular Front's federal coordinating committee asking to extend the application period for primaries. The primaries' results will serve as a basis for United Russia's pre-election list.
Members of United Russia and the Popular Front expected to stop filing applications by July 1. However, on July 5, the party's leadership called a news conference to announce the extension of the application period. Sergei Neverov, the party's general council presidium secretary said that the Front's regional councils submitted 4,100 applications for primaries to the federal authorities by July 1. But the list of those wanting to be listed in the voting ballot was not closed yet: individuals and legal entities continued to apply.
"Public organisations might have failed to understand what to do or to meet the deadline or had some other problems," explained Andrei Vorobyov, head of the United Russia's central committee. "This mustn't become the reason for non-admission. All those who wanted to take part in the primaries will do so."
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov told Izvestia that the Front's coordinating committees failed to cope with the flow of applications for objective reasons: "In the previous years, we received about 2,000 applications or less, and we did not expect this figure to double. Thus, in order to preserve the spirit of transparency and equal opportunity, we decided to extend the period so that all those wanting to apply could do so."
At present, United Russia hopes that the Popular Front's coordinating committee will accept applications until July 12. During the next eight days it should approve the list of participants, and the primaries will be held from July 21 to August 10. United Russia's final pre-election list will be approved at the September 3-4 meeting.
Originally, United Russia's members scheduled the party's conference for other dates. According to Izvestia, they expected to hold the conference three weeks later, on September 24-25. That is why the primaries were scheduled for August 1 rather than July 21, which shows that there was no rush. It was this date that was mentioned by Andrei Vorobyov in June.
However, at the June 16 meeting of the Popular Front's federal coordinating committee, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin changed his plans and proposed to hold the conference on September 3-4. As a result, the primaries' organisers had to change the terms, including the application period, and failed to meet the new deadline.
Some experts believe that United Russia has decided to delay the event deliberately. Stanislav Belkovsky, President of the National Strategy Institute, pointed out that Boris Gryzlov, head of United Russia's supreme council, has promised to grant 150 positions out of 600 in the election list to non-members of the party. In Belkovsky's opinion, inner-party debates are inevitable under the new circumstances, which requires time.
In addition, the organisations that entered the Popular Front are currently being inspected to find out whether labour collectives have joined the movement voluntarily.
Mikhail Rubin, Alexandra Bayazitova
