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Russia's Two Political Parties Agree to Merge
Russia's two influential political parties, the Union of Right Forces (SPS) and the liberal Yabloko movement on Wednesday agreed to gradually unite their organizations into a strong right-wing coalition.
State Duma (the lower house of parliament) vice-speaker, SPS deputy Irina Khakamada and Yabloko leader Vladimir Lukin signed an accord.
The unification is aimed to "consolidate democratic liberal forces in Russia and combine efforts to strengthen fundamental common values such as a civil society, market economy and legal state," says the pact.
The SPS, led by former prime minister Sergei Kiriyenko, and Yabloko, chaired by liberal economist Grigory Yavlinsky, will nominate unified lists of candidates in the next Duma elections, it says.
Meanwhile, the two political organizations will support commonly agreed upon candidates in all regional and local elections after September 1, 2000.
The two parties "will immediately begin to take steps at regional and local levels to coordinate the actions of SPS and Yabloko regional and local branches in an effort to complete formation of unified organizations in most regions in 2001," the document reads.
SPS and Yabloko will also immediately start the establishment of a united political council on the basis of parity to coordinate the work of their branches at federal, regional and local levels.
The organizational legal form of the united coalition is to be defined no later than December 2000, according to the agreement.
The move of the two right-wing organizations is of historic importance, said Khakamada and Lukin.
SPS leader Boris Nemtsov, who attended the signing ceremony, said the union is open for all of Russia's democratic liberal forces to join. However, he said, an agreement has been reached with Yabloko's leadership that "absolute consent" is necessary when taking in new members in the coalition.
Yavlinsky said the nascent coalition "will refuse to discuss the problems that separated us in the past " and "will look to the future."
"With the end of the Yeltsin era, an opportunity has emerged to shape Russia's political landscape in a different way," he said, describing the union's prospects as "very solid."
SPS and Yabloko, which collected respectively about 8.7 and 6 percent of votes in December's Duma elections, ranked fourth and fifth among the six parties in the State Duma. They hold 29 and 20 seats in the 450-seat Duma.
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