MOSCOW, March 22 (Itar-Tass) —— A Just Russia party refutes allegations about a split in the party. There is no splitting; there is a keen discussion, members of the party’s faction in the Russian State Duma lower parliament house, Ilya Ponomaryov and Gennady Gudkov, said on Thursday.
Commenting on a letter written by a number of A Just Russia faction members on the need of cardinal structural changes within the party, Gudkov described the letter as “reasonable and well-balanced.” “It is necessary to give an assessment of recent political developments, it is necessary to give the party a new dynamic character, and I do not see any split-ward moods in it. There is a discussion inside the party and it is a sign of life, unlike in other parties, which are decaying,” he said.
Ponomaryov shared the opinion. “This letter proves only one thing, that is – we are a live party, unlike others that are “a dead duck.”
Earlier, a number of A Just Russia lawmakers, including Galina Khovanskaya, Valery Zubov, and others, posted a letter on the Internet calling for ideological and organizational reforms in the party. Thus, the authors of the letter call on the party to “become real Social Democrats rather than fling from present-day social democracy and the nostalgia for the lost Soviet-era socialism,” “to win over the middle class which is the grassroots of socio-economic and political protest” and become a “party of regions.”