MOSCOW, September 20 (Itar-Tass) — The election list of the Right Cause Party may comprise 377 candidates; they will be divided into 77 regional groups. The candidates' names were put on the ballots for secret voting which took place at the Party's Congress in the Russian capital on Tuesday.
Ten candidates will be on the federal part of the list. The leaders are acting Party chairman Andrei Dunayev, former Democratic Party leader Andrei Bogdanov and tennis player Anna Chakvetadze.
Aside from them, the ten include Vyacheslav Smirnov, Party programs developer Vladislav Inozemtsev, Valery Fedotov, Alexander Lunin, Grigory Tomchin, Vyacheslav Maratkanov and member of the Public Chamber, director of the Moscow Human Rights Bureau Alexander Brod.
When asked about the absence of well-known personalities among the first ten candidates on the list -- except tennis player Anna Chakvetadze -- Dunayev replied that "enlisting well-known persons is a good election technology, but we decided to have a go using our own resources."
Andrei Bogdanov said he was confident that the popularity factor would not be decisive at the polls, because Right Cause is "an ideological party."
Right Cause hopes to gather 7 percent of votes in the upcoming elections to the 6th State Duma lower house of the Russian parliament and form a full-fledged faction there.
To take part in the election, the rightists have to get at least 150,000 voter signatures. October 19 is the deadline for submitting the documents for registration of the Party's list to the Central Election Commission.
Right Cause will participate in election to regional assemblies in Russian provinces. The only exception is the Jewish Autonomous Area.
The center-right Right Cause was set up in November 2008, in a merger between three liberal bodies: Civil Force, Democratic Party and the Union of Right Wing Forces (SPS). The SPS gathered 8.52 percent at the 1999 parliamentary election and was represented in the State Duma. After the defeat at the 2003 elections, the Party repeatedly attempted to restructure itself, and finally merged into Right Cause. In June, billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov became the Party leader, but its Congress on September 15 ousted him.
Also on Tuesday, the Congress of Right Cause approved the election program. The rightists declared such objectives as curbing the outrage committed by officials and law-enforcers, and canceling lawmakers' immunity.
In the economy, the Party pays special attention to the tax system. Specifically, it calls for exempting from the income tax the low-income strata, i.e. those who are paid less than 15,000 roubles a month.
It proposes a moratorium on tax hikes for the period of functioning of the 6th State Duma.
The rightists believe that all farms should be exempt from taxes for a decade.
Among other items on the program are restrictions on the expenditure for law-enforcers, which should not exceed the outlays for health case. A number of security services will be dissolve so that "officials feel themselves as residents of their own country."
The program contains a provision on Russia’s immediate application for EU membership. It was the key item on the program of the Democratic Party in 2007.