Lawmakers quit Right Cause party after congress split

A number of senior politicians from the former Union of Right Forces party (SPS) have quit Russia's Right Cause party, just days after metals tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov was ousted as leader. The party, created through the amalgamation of SPS, Democratic Party and Civil Power party in 2008, is pushing a liberal pro-business agenda. "The majority of SPS representatives have resigned literally before my eyes," top party figure Boris Nadezhdin told RIA Novosti. Prokhorov, Russia's third-richest man with an estimated fortune of about $18 billion, was ousted as Right Cause leader late last week following a split in the party. Some Russian media have claimed the party was deliberately neutered by pro-Kremlin figures concerned about Prokhorov's emergence as a political force. "President Dmitry Medvedev and Premier Vladimir Putin appointed the billionaire head of Right Cause," said political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky in a column in the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper. "They then became disappointed with him and removed him. That's all there is to the plot of the Prokhorov melodrama." Speaking to reporters after he was voted out during the party's general congress on Thursday, Prokhorov accused Vladislav Surkov, a long-serving Kremlin ideologue, of "privatizing" the country's political system and behaving like a "puppet-master."