MOSCOW, May 18 (RIA Novosti's Larisa Sayenko) - Russia's political parties have not overcome the crisis which followed their failure at the December 7, 2003 parliamentary elections. They had to cede majority in the State Duma to the pro-presidential party United Russia.
This is the opinion of experts at the Political Technologies Center and the Friedrich Ebert Fund. On Wednesday they presented an analytical report on the Russian party system.
"Overcoming the crisis and developing an efficient party system are rather vague and faraway. They should rather be linked to the next, not the present electoral cycle (the next parliamentary elections are due in 2007)", reads the report presented by Boris Makarenko and Alexei Makarkin.
The analysts are pessimistic about prospects for the rivals of United Russia.
Enjoying the "party of power" status, United Russia will preserve domination on the political skyline. According to the expert classification, United Russia proved to be among the reformist parties like Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces (having failed to cross the 5% margin, the two parties were thrown out of the State Duma).
"The initial stage of political capital accumulation is gone. However, we share common economic positions with liberals", said Vladimir Medinsky of the United Russia presidium.
The Communist Party's drift to social democracy is impossible. An association on the right wing is dubitable, although single-handed liberal parties stand no chance of entering the State Duma, in the opinion of the authors of the report (the election margin was raised to 7%).
The experts note that the old party leaders have been "exhausted" and no new ones are in view. Party life itself has largely become virtual PR projects than the struggle for survival. In this sense, the "popular government" of Gennady Semigin seems to be a political novelty, although it has no political future.
"The crisis of parties may not have reached its minimum limit and may still give rise to a new model of the party system", the experts concluded.
Explaining their failure, politicians from the opposition bloc attending the presentation mostly referred to the administrative resource aimed against rivals of United Russia and social apathy in the regions.
