The gathered representatives of the party's regional branches intend to collect the necessary number of signatures in support of Mikhail Lapshin's resignation from the post of the Agrarian Party leader.
Mr. Lapshin himself evaluated the gathered session as the "Moscow squeeze" and said that he intended to continue his pre-session meetings with the party's regional representatives.
"We are expecting Mr. Lapshin. It's still early to predict whether the majority would speak for his resignation. The party's activists will either sack him or reconcile with him," Mikhail Tulsky, one of the session's initiators, disclosed.
In other words, the party is choosing a new course. The possible candidates for the post of the party's leader are Nikolai Kharitonov, a political activist of the KPRF (Communist Party), who ran for the Presidency this year, State Duma Deputy Vladimir Plotnikov and Russian businessman Aleksey Chepa.
Mr. Kharitonov, who also heads one of the Agrarian Party's local branches, intends to insist on Mr. Lapshin's resignation, a political veteran, who turns this year 70.
"I categorically speak for Mr. Lapshin's resignation, who recently became a political weather-vane and practically destroyed the party after loosing all seats in the Parliament. The party currently does not defend interests of agrarians and needs to change its course drastically," Mr. Kharitonov disclosed.
Representatives of the party say that the expected speech of Mr. Kharitonov, who finished second in the March 14th Presidential elections with 12% of the votes, will have its moral and psychological impact on the gathered regional representatives.
