Jabloko Association Congress Opens In Moscow

On Saturday, December 22, a 2-day congress of Jabloko Association will start its work in Moscow. At the congress the Association will be transformed into a political party. The forum will be attended by 700 delegates representing Jabloko regional branches in 89 constituent members of the Russian Federation. The delegates will discuss and adopt the statute and programme of the future party which will be tentatively named the Russian Democratic Party Jabloko, and issue an appeal to the Russian citizens -- a Democratic manifesto. The delegates will also elect the ruling bodies of the party and its leader. As the observers believe, the current leader Grigory Javlinsky has no real rivals, the more so as a number of prominent Jabloko members who disagreed with the policy pursued by Javlinski, among them parliamentarians Vyacheslav Igrunov, Yelena Mizulina and Nikolai Travkin, have already left the Jabloko ranks.