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Moscow Times
September 30, 2005
Political Parties Face Federal Scrutiny
By Francesca Mereu
Staff Writer

A federal agency said Thursday that it would soon begin a first check of political parties to make sure that they met rules requiring them to have at least 50,000 members and at least 500 members in dozens of regional branches.

Federal Registration Service director Sergei Movchan said his agency would place a special "focus on parties' memberships" when it starts the check in October, Interfax reported.

Legislation approved in December requires parties to quintuple membership from 10,000 and have regional branches with at least 500 members in more than half of the country's 89 regions. Previously, regional branches had to have at least 100 members.

Under the law, parties have until Jan. 1 to submit the documents proving that they meet the requirements, reregister as social organizations or disband.

Critics have accused the Kremlin of trying to clear the political field of all but a handful of parties with the bill, which was submitted by three of the four State Duma factions: the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, the nationalist Rodina party and the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party, or LDPR.

So far, only those parties and the fourth Duma faction, the Communist Party, have submitted the necessary membership documents, Movchan said.

United Russia has 945,000 members, according to its web site, while the Communist Party has more than 190,000 members, according to its central committee secretary, Vadim Solovyov. LDPR has some 100,000 members, its leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, told Vedomosti earlier this month.

Rodina has 120,000 members, more than triple the 37,000 it had last year, party spokesman Sergei Butin said.

The liberal Yabloko and Union of Right Forces, or SPS, parties said they had enough members, but expressed concern that authorities might still find something wrong with their documents.

"We have 76,000 members, but we are afraid because we know that there are several levers to put parties under pressure," Yabloko spokeswoman Yevgenia Dillendorf said. "But if things are done according to the law, Yabloko has everything in order."

SPS spokesman Denis Terekhov said the party had more than 50,000 members but was planning to increase the number to 75,000 by year's end "just in case."

Movchan said 36 parties were now registered and that his agency had denied registration to six new parties this year.

In 1995, 111 parties and movements took part in Duma elections. The number fell to 64 in 1999 and then 30 in 2003, Movchan said. "This is a trend that is going to develop further," he said.