Friday, Mar 26, 2004
Move to split Russian Communist Party
By Vladimir Radyuhin
MOSCOW, MARCH 25. A new left-wing coalition may be set up in Russia later this year in a move designed to split the Communist Party after it was weakened by recent election setbacks.
Several dozen dwarfish political parties, trade unions and organisations gathered in Moscow recently for a "Forum of Russian Patriots" to announce plans to form a "leftist patriotic coalition" by the end of the year. The meeting was organised by two leading Communist rebels, Gennady Seleznyov and Gennady Semigin. They held the posts of Speaker and Deputy Speaker respectively in the previous legislature and were members of the ruling caucus of the Communist Party before falling out with the party leader, Gennady Zyuganov.
Mr. Zyuganov, who ignored the meeting, dismissed his two namesakes as "Kremlin moles" tasked with splitting the Communist Party and was in turn accused of failing to reform the party to respond to the demands of the times.
"The Communist Party needs modernisation, it needs a new programme and new leaders," Mr. Semigin told reporters. He predicted that Mr. Zyuganov could lose his post as party leader at a Communist congress in June. Until last year Mr. Semigin, a businessman, was responsible for the Communist coffers and used the position to extend his influence to many regional branches of the party. The latest blow to the Communist leadership came as the party still reels from painful election setbacks. In December elections to the State Duma, Communists won 53 seats in the 450-member Lower House, down from 128 seats they had in the previous Parliament, down again from 176 seats they had still earlier.
In the March 14 presidential poll the Communist candidate, Nikolai Kharitonov, fared little better with 14.3 per cent of the votes, finishing a distant second to the winner, President Vladimir Putin, who garnered over 70 per cent.
Copyright © 2004, The Hindu.