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Moscow Times
May 31, 2005.
New SPS Chief Says Party Needs a Motto
By Francesca Mereu
Staff Writer

The Union of Right Forces, or SPS, will not review its policies as it attempts to win over voters but instead launch a public relations campaign with a motto such as "Russia in Europe" to help people understand what the party stands for, two senior SPS officials said Monday.

SPS elected a new leadership at a congress Saturday, amid calls from some members to transform from a liberal, pro-business party into one with an oppositional stance to the Kremlin that would set it apart from other parties.

New SPS chairman Nikita Belykh acknowledged Monday that the party faces an uphill fight for votes, but insisted that the main problem is a widespread lack of understanding about SPS's ideology. "Our party is not going to be only the party for the 'Garden Ring,' or rich Muscovites, but a party for all the country," Belykh said at a news conference.

"The plan is to make our party more popular, and this is not going to be an easy task," he said. "Our program is not going to change, but we should find a way to make our ideology understandable for our voters."

Former SPS chairman Boris Nemtsov said at the same news conference that the party should chose a motto understandable to "millions of Russians." "I think a motto such as 'Russia in Europe' would be liked by people who share liberal and democratic ideas as well as those who have socialist ideas," Nemtsov said.

Russia, he said, needs to decide whether to ally itself more closely with China, Central Asia or the European Union. "Of these three -- China, the fundamentalist Central Asian regimes and Europe -- the Union of Right Forces chooses Europe," he said.

Belykh agreed with Nemtsov and said he had spoken with many European ambassadors in Moscow. He did not elaborate.

Belykh dismissed worries voiced by some senior party members that he and his new deputy chairman, Leonid Gozman, had been tapped by SPS co-founder Anatoly Chubais to make the party pro-Kremlin. Gozman is a board member of Unified Energy Systems, the state power monopoly run by Anatoly Chubais, and is widely seen as Chubais' right-hand man. Belykh, 29, is a deputy governor of Perm.

Belykh said he would resign from that post Tuesday and would visit all 40 of the party's regional branches that had not voted for him at Saturday's congress. He was elected in a 155-40 vote.

"People don't know who Belykh is in many regions. I hope to win their trust with my personality," he said.

As for the Kremlin, Belykh said, SPS will never be a pocket party. "We are ready to cooperate with them, but we'll always be independent," he said.