On Friday night, the Presidium of United Russia Party General Council made an unexpected decision to call the party’s 9th assembly in Moscow on April 14 and 15. The said there was an urgent need to discuss the strategy of Russia’s development until 2020. Party leaders also say they have no intention to ‘monopolize’ the country’s future
The decision to hold the assembly in mid-April was taken urgently – at first the issue was not even planned for discussion at the meeting. UR’s move could not but raise questions, as the party’s 8th assembly took place only a few months ago.
Andrei Isaev, the Presidium’s vice secretary, explained to Expert Online there was a need for UR to ‘summarize the results’ of the two election campaigns – general and presidential – in order to work out a ‘step-by-step schedule’ of how United Russia’s campaign promises would be implemented.
Yuri Shuvalov, another party leader, thinks an assembly is a logical move as UR is ‘actively involved’ in designing Vladimir Putin’s development strategy up to 2020, making suggestions on issues like economy, social politics and administrative reform.
United Russia’s top leader Boris Gryzlov promised the assembly would be an ‘innovative’. He said the report on the party’s role in formation and implementation of strategy-2020 would become the assembly’s central event.
The party does have a lot of ideas about Russia’s future. Last Saturday, experts from UR’s Center for Social and Conservative Politics discussed taxation reform. Many party members welcomed Putin and Medvedev’s idea to decrease VAT rate. Duma member Igor Igoshin said the change was crucial, and called VAT ‘one of the most corrupt’ taxes in Russia. Other party members suggested cutting income tax as well and reforming the social tax.
In his interview to Expert Online, Yuri Shuvalov stressed United Russia was not going to ‘monopolize’ the work on the country’s future. “When we talk about the strategy, we take other political forces into account as well, he said. We are not monopolizing the work on the strategy, we are only suggesting a basis for such work in the future”. Shuvalov also said he was planning to meet a number of experts and analytical centers United Russia would like to invite to participate in designing the country’s future.
Russia’s Cabinet is also working on a plan of future social and political development, and the document may surface already in May.
Vera Kholmogorova
http://eng.expert.ru
