Right Cause Party Stops Being ‘liberal’ – Leader

MOSCOW. Nov 3 (Interfax) – The Right Cause party had decided to amend its political orientation and work hard to perform well in elections in 2013.

“We are abandoning the word ‘liberal’. We are becoming a right party in all senses of this word – if you wish, a right party leaning toward national patriotism, and we will be moving in this very direction,” Right Cause leader Andrei Dunayev said in the keynote report at a party congress
on Saturday.

“If we fail (to reform the party) in half a year, then we can stop our work,” he said.

“Winning the upcoming elections and successfully performing in the Moscow mayoral elections is within our power,” Dunayev said.

Most of Dunayev’s speech was devoted to criticizing the party for virtually having done nothing in the four years of its existence. “Have we proven our ability to lead society? No. Society has not noticed anything except some scandals involving our party due to our passivity or even venality,” he said.

While admitting that Right Cause depends on the Kremlin to some extent, Dunayev noted: “There is not a single party that would be absolutely independent of the Kremlin, because it has only to call the Justice Ministry to have the party banned,” he said.

Dunayev also criticized the currently existing election system in Russia. “It makes it problematic already now for non-parliamentary parties to run in various elections,” he said.