January 28, 2008	Monday	Muharram 18,1429

MOSCOW, Jan 27: Russia’s election authorities on Sunday barred former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov, a sharp critic of the Kremlin, from running in a March presidential election against President Vladimir Putin’s chosen candidate.

Kasyanov’s supporters said the March 2 poll would now be a farce and the move showed the Kremlin feared any real challenge to Dmitry Medvedev, the man Putin has backed to succeed him. The election commission voted unanimously to refuse to register Kasyanov because of technical errors, including forgery, which it said were found in some of the 2 million signatures needed to register him as a candidate.

“This means the elections will be a farce,” Kasyanov’s spokeswoman, Yelena Dikun, said by telephone.

“It shows the authorities are afraid of any competition, it means the authorities fear any alternative points of view,” she said. “They are afraid, just so afraid.”

Kasyanov, 50, who served as Putin’s first prime minister, has accused his former boss of rolling back democracy, mismanaging Russia’s booming economy and creating a political system that is dangerously dependent on one man.

But he had little chance of winning an election, with opinion polls showing he had less than 1 per cent support.

But blocking Kasyanov from the race may raise concerns about the fairness of the vote, which the opposition says is slanted in favour of Medvedev, a 42-year-old first deputy prime minister who polls forecast will win a landslide in the election.

The election will be closely monitored by the United States and the European Union after international observers said last year’s parliamentary vote was skewed by interference from the authorities.—Reuters