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"United Russia" agreed to become a party of "sovereign democrats"
“Yesterday United Russia discussed their election program at a meeting of the bureau of the party’s Supreme Council. As the leader of United Russia, State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov told reporters, the public presentation of the new party theses will take place on October 2. So acquaintance with the first detailed program of the party, which has formally been in power in Russia throughout the 21st century, and has a constitutional majority in the lower house of the Federal Assembly, is again postponed.United Russia attracted as many as five expert groups to write its main ideological document, each of which prepared its own version of the program, and yesterday the party members brought it all together. “We have reached the point where this program is ready for printing,” Mr. Gryzlov said. According to him, changes will still be made to the draft program, which, on the one hand, “may be quite unexpected,” but at the same time, “from the point of view of voters, they can be called expected.” He then explained that this cryptic statement referred primarily to proposals for developing a new industrial policy in the country.
Before the official presentation, United Russia does not want to lift the veil of secrecy and divulge the key theses of the program. However, as Vremya Novostei learned, the core role in the text of the document will still be played by the term “sovereign democracy” introduced into the Russian political lexicon by Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Vladislav Surkov, around which there has been a lively discussion for the last six months. Over the summer, Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, considered one of the main candidates to succeed the president, criticized the term. “It is much more correct to talk about true democracy or simply about democracy in the presence of comprehensive state sovereignty. If any definitions are attached to the word “democracy”, it creates a strange aftertaste. This suggests that we are talking about some other, non-traditional democracy,” Mr. Medvedev said in an interview with Expert magazine. At the same time, the president, at a recent meeting with the United Russia parliamentary faction, noted: “You have your own political vision of the development of Russia as a sovereign democratic state with a competitive market economy and effective social policy.” However, later, at a meeting with foreign political scientists, members of the so-called Valdai Club, the president spoke about “sovereign democracy” closer to Mr. Medvedev than to Mr. Surkov.
Recently, the topic of sovereign democracy was raised at a round table with the participation of politicians and political scientists who took part in the development of the United Russia program. “The president’s thesis that sovereignty is Russia’s positioning in the world is very important to me. If you remember, quite recently we simply talked about sovereignty within, and not outside, the country,” Vladimir Pligin, a member of the General Council of United Russia and one of the developers of the party’s program documents, noted at that round table. Another developer of the program, Valery Fadeev, a member of the Public Chamber and editor-in-chief of the very magazine “Expert”, where this idea was criticized by the First Deputy Prime Minister, believes that the thesis of sovereign democracy should become the core of the political section of the program: “Sovereignty, freedom as the foundations of democracy , as well as justice and property as the material basis of freedom and sovereignty - these are the key provisions that the program must contain. When developing the project, we were guided by two principles - realism and practicality. Realism is based on knowledge of the realities of one’s own country, and practicality gives an understanding of what decisions need to be made to implement the tasks set by the party. We must determine the country’s development strategy for the next 20-25 years.”
As Valery Ryazansky, Deputy Secretary of the Presidium of the General Council of United Russia, noted, in their program United Russia advocates for social values, and also claims that they are not a party of the bureaucracy, but of the general population. (Although the bureaucracy in Russia is also a very, very broad layer.) During October, the program will be discussed in the regions, after which it will be adopted by the next congress of United Russia.
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Vladimir Ilyich joined United Russia
Adviser to the Minister of Justice of the Russian Federation Vladimir Kolesnikov, who became famous for his fiery speeches as Deputy Prosecutor General (in particular, he publicly promised to invite FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev and Internal Affairs Minister Rashid Nurgaliev for questioning in connection with the events in Beslan), as well as his own beloved According to Vladimir Putin, the singer of the Russian President, leader of the Lyube group Nikolai Rastorguev, joined the United Russia party on Wednesday.
As the party leader, State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov told reporters following a meeting of the bureau of the Supreme Council of United Russia, Vladimir Kolesnikov will ensure that there are no candidates from criminal structures in the elections to government bodies. “Today we talked with Vladimir Ilyich (Kolesnikov) that he will be that member of the party, while he is not a member of the party’s governing bodies, who will deeply study this issue and make recommendations on establishing the highest possible barriers so that none of the parties proposed candidates for elected authorities from criminal backgrounds,” said Mr. Gryzlov.
The State Duma speaker also said that on Wednesday an agreement was signed “with the creative team “Lube”, with Nikolai Rastorguev on interaction.” “I would like to take this opportunity to say that today Nikolai Rastorguev received a party card,” added Mr. Gryzlov. In turn, Mr. Rastorguev, who supported the Rodina bloc in the last Duma elections, promised that now the Lyube group will take part in the election campaigns of the party in power. “We decided that we would, as a creative team, support United Russia in every possible way,” the singer said.