Putin to attend meeting of ONF Fed coordinating council

MOSCOW, September 21 (Itar-Tass) - Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir
Putin will attend a meeting of the Federal Coordinating Council (FCC) of
the ONF (Russian acronym for All-Russia Popular Front) on Wednesday. The
government press service announced on Tuesday that those present at the
FCC meeting are expected to approve a draft list of ONF candidates at
elections to the State Duma. The list is to be presented for confirmation
by the delegates to the Sept 23-24 congress of the United Russia party
(URP).
Putin said on numerous occasions that the ruling party is in need of
renewal and "an injection of fresh blood". According to the Premier, out
of 600 candidates (it is precisely such an number of names are on the
preliminary list), at least one-quarter will be chosen not from the URP
long-serving members but from among those people who have gone through
preliminary popular voting (or primaries), and who quite often do not
associate themselves with any party.
Such popular voting was held ahead of elections to the lower house of
the Federal Assembly (parliament) in all regions of Russia from July 21 to
August 25, with over 4,700 people participating. According to statistics
given by the Premier at a meeting with participants in this procedure,
about 38 percent of candidates were from the URP, 58 percent were from
various public organizations which took part in the voting through the
ONF. There were also five percent of self-nominees.
The government press service pointed out, "Due to the Popular Front, a
wide circle of members of public organizations, including non-party
people, got an opportunity to suggest their candidacies on a par with
Party candidates. The results of the preliminary voting confirmed the
correctness of inviting members of the general public and self-nominees to
take part in the (forthcoming) elections: in the regions, ONF candidates
were among 'tens' of leaders: 320 participants in the primaries were
nominated by public organizations, with 149 of them being non-party
people".
The press service announcement said, "Thereby, many 'new faces'
appeared in the Russian political scene during the holding of preliminary
popular voting -- those are people with an active civic attitude, who are
not indifferent in their striving to resolve matters of current
importance".
At the close of the preliminary popular voting procedures, lists with
voting results were referred to the State Duma for it to sum up the
preliminary results and confirm candidates who willorun for the State Duma
at the ONF FCC meetingto be attended by Vladimir Putin.
However, work on the problems raised by participants in the
preliminary voting has already begun in the government. Last week, at a
special meeting the Premier gave a number of current operation
assignments to Cabinet ministers and other Federal officials. Those
assignments concern specifically arrangements for care for solitary people
of advanced age, support for handicapped people, especially the blind,
deaf and dumb, modernization of school education, provision of housing for
those who cannot afford to buy an apartment, the construction of student
residential buildings, and restructuring of various branches of production.