22 December 2003 01:45
Anti-Putin parties fail to nominate candidate
Russia's leading liberal parties have failed to nominate a joint candidate for the country's presidential elections next year in the wake of their defeat in the parliamentary elections earlier this month. Grigory Yavlinsky, a veteran of the country's democratic movement and the leader of the liberal Yabloko party, said his party would not take part in the presidential poll on March 14 on the grounds that elections in Russia were "neither free nor fair". Mr Yavlinsky's decision not to run for the presidency follows suggestions from the Communist party that it might also boycott the presidential elections after coming under heavy fire from the state-owned television channels in the run-up to the parliamentary polls. Vladimir Putin, who enjoys a popularity rating of almost 80 per cent, appears certain to be re-elected for a second term next year, but the boycotting of the election by the leading political parties could overshadow his victory. The Union of Right Forces, led by Anatoly Chubais, the architect of Russian privatisation, and Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, will decide next month whether to take part in the presidential election. Both Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces failed to get past a 5 per cent threshold to get into parliament. At its party congress yesterday, Yabloko said: "The parliamentary election campaign demonstrated the lack of free democratic elections in Russia." Political parties and international observers have criticised the use of ad-ministrative resources and biased television coverage given to the pro-Kremlin United Russia party that helped it to win 37 per cent of the votes. International observers, including the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, said the elections were "overwhelmingly distorted" and were a "regression in the democratisation process in the country". But the failure of Yabloko and the Union of Right forces to agree on a single candidate also shows the weakness of democratic forces in Russia and their lack of co-ordination, which was the main reason behind their defeat in the parliamentary elections. * At its party congress Yabloko also called for the release of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the largest shareholder in the Yukos oil company, from pre-trial detention. A Moscow court is set to decide today whether to release Mr Khodorkovsky on bail. He was arrested on October 25 and charged with fraud, tax evasion and theft.
[FTI [The Financial Times]] |
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