Liberal Russia Party Elects Boris Berezovsky Its Leader

Oligarch Boris Berezovsky definitely wants to escape from the legal persecution

Participants of the special congress of the Liberal Russia party elected well-known oligarch Boris Berezovsky their leader. It took oligarch's followers almost 20 hours to determine the political fate of their party, which had split in October of the past year. The congress started working on Saturday morning and was lasting until 7 a.m. of Sunday morning. The congress also elected the only co-chairman of the party, Mikhail Kodanev and the new staff of the party's political council of 30 members. The council automatically included leaders of all regional divisions of the party (51).

On Saturday, Berezovsky's followers upheld the decision of the Central Council of the Party to exclude Viktor Pokhmelkin and Yury Nisnevich from Liberal Russia. In addition to it, the congress ruled to cease authorities of the Central Council and of the party's co-chairman. Yet, excluded members are not going to agree upon that. The joint session of Liberal Russia's Central and political councils took place on Saturday in the Moscow region, where Viktor Pokhmelkin announced the party's objectives for the coming six months.

The major goal of the party is to "strive for the considerable liberalization of the present regime through the participation in parliamentary elections," as Viktor Pokhmelkin put it. He reminded that a new political coalition was going to be established to form the election bloc on the base of Liberal Russia party and Republican Party. Pokhmelkin also pointed out that the goal of liberal and democratic forces was to win parliamentary elections and set up the faction in the State Duma, which would not be bought by any oligarchs. Pokhmelkin also added that Liberal Russia party still remained a party of the opposition.

Commenting on Berezovsky's undertaking, Viktor Pokhmelkin stated: "This is just a group of impostors, who do not have anything to do with Liberal Russia, but those people help us to get rid of those, who had joined the party due to their selfish interests." He said that Boris Berezovsky's proponents lied when they said that the majority of Liberal Russia's regional divisions were on their side. He emphasized that Berezovsky's followers had no political goals, "they were simply working Berezovsky's money off." "I hope that the Justice Ministry or a court will estimate their actions accordingly," said Viktor Pokhmelkin.

The politician also said that separated members were threatening "official" leaders of the party. This is rather serious, Pokhmelkin believes, for two co-chairmen of the party, Sergey Yushenkov and Vladimir Golovlev had already been killed. Pokhmelkin strongly rejected an opportunity to join Boris Berezovsky in the future: "He has done his best to discredit the liberal movement, he is a person of no principles, he does not have any political objectives, he is simply trying to get away from the legal persecution on the part of the Russian government, which demand he should be extradited."

In fact, the question pertaining to Liberal Russia has already been solved. The Justice Ministry registered Viktor Pokhmelkin's party, not Boris Berezovsky's, so all those petty cares do not worth a thing. On the other hand, no one is going to help Pokhmelkin and his party make it to the Duma, because there are a lot of people wishing to get there.