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Congress of Yabloko Party approves list of candidates for Duma

The federal part includes the greatest possible number of candidates – 10 people

MOSKOVSKY, Moscow Region, September 11 (Itar-Tass) — The congress of the Yabloko Party, now in progress in the Moscow Region, approved the list of party candidates to run in the race for the State Duma.

The federal part includes the greatest possible number of candidates – 10 people. The list is headed by one of the party founders and now member of its political committee Grigory Yavlinsky; he is followed by Yabloko chairman Sergei Mitrokhin and the third is head of the intra-party faction Green Russia Alexei Yablokov.

The federal part of the list also includes chairman of the Perm regional branch of the party Olga Kolokolova, head of inside-party faction Soldiers’ Mothers Svetlana Kuznetsova, member of the general council of Business Russia Anatoly Leirikh, coordinator of the political committee Boris Misnik. He is followed by professor of the Higher Economics School Igor Nikolayev, then editor-in-chief of the magazine World Economy and International Relations Andrei Ryabov. Member of the party’s federal bureau Alexander Shishlov is the last in the federal “ten”.

All in all, the list consists of 380 candidates from 82 regional groups. A total of 24 percent of them are women. Party members make up 80 percent; two-thirds have higher education, incidentally 15 percent are doctors and candidates of sciences.

Prominent journalists are included in the Yabloko list – Novaya Gazeta editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov and columnist of Moskovsky Komsomolets Yulia Kalinina. Several regional groups are headed by representatives of ecological and human rights organizations.

The congress approved the election platform late on Saturday evening, proposed by party founder Yavlinsky. The document “Russia demands changes!” submitted by Yavlinsky together with party chairman Mitrokhin, promises “to save the country from the burden of backward peripheral capitalism by peaceful constitutional way” and to build “a modern lawful democratic social state”.

The party defends a social market economy, equality for starting possibilities, inviolability of private property, competition in politics and economy as well as strengthening of democratic institutes, supremacy of law and stronger control of people over authorities. A considerable part of the document deals with the struggle against monopolies and corruption.

The Yabloko Party was represented in the first, second and third State Dumas. The bloc Yavlinsky-Boldyrev-Lukin (YaBL), later called Yabloko, gained 7.86 percent in the first State Duma in 1993. In 1995, the party was backed by 6.89 percent of the electorate and in 1999 – 5.93 percent. In 2003, the party gained only 4.3 percent, which was below the five-percent barrier. In 2007, the party collected only 1.59 percent of the vote.