The Pravoye Delo (Right Cause) party held a founding congress earlier in the day. The new party was set up, under Kremlin plans, based on the former Union of Right Forces (SPS), Democratic, and Civil Force parties.
The Liberal Democratic party (LDPR), led by the firebrand nationalist Vladimir Zhirinkovsky, is the third largest party after United Russia and the Communist Party.
Igor Lebedev, who heads the LDPR faction in the State Duma, predicted a "short life" for the Pravoye Delo party.
"Parties are not created from above, they are built from a base. They should reflect the will of the people that create them. What is being created now is just another project, and none of these projects produce anything good," he told RIA Novosti.
The organizers of the new party earlier said in a statement that its principles were "democracy, the free market, the rule of law and the equality of all before the law."
The party's three co-chairmen will be Boris Titov, Georgy Bovt and Leonid Gozman, former senior members of Civil Force, the Democratic Party and the SPS, respectively. The party is expected to take part in the March 2009 regional election.
Lebedev ridiculed the idea of having three party leaders, saying: "Each party has its leader. The LDPR has Zhirinovsky, who the whole country knows. The Communist Party has [Gennady] Zyuganov, and he is also known by the whole country. When there are three co-chairmen, this is no party."
"I am not a future teller, but the Rodina bloc, which was created before the 2003 election, existed only two years, and A Just Russia, which is kept alive by just one man [Sergei Mironov] will only exist until the end of the current State Duma term. And as for the right-wing party - perhaps they will manage to take part in the next State Duma elections, but they will not get through, and that will be the end of the matter," Lebedev said.
