The New York Times-20080128-Russia Bars Opposition Candidate From March 2 Ballot

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Russia Bars Opposition Candidate From March 2 Ballot

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The Russian government on Sunday denied an opposition leader's application to appear on the March 2 presidential ballot, clearing a path for the Kremlin's favorite candidate to run all but unchallenged.

The Central Election Commission announced the decision denying registration of the opposition leader, former Prime Minister Mikhail M. Kasyanov, saying that more than 13 percent of the signatures that he had collected in support of his candidacy were invalid.

The decision, which means that disaffected citizens or protest voters will not have the option of casting their ballots for a well-known and experienced opposition candidate, was foreshadowed last week and had been expected.

Mr. Kasyanov described the rejection of his candidacy as a political decision orchestrated by a Kremlin that was afraid of a free and open vote. It left him with a moral victory, he said.

In spite of all circumstances, we have won because we have held our honor and dignity, and we have done all we could in the current situation, he said in a statement, referring to the near total control of state resources and government agencies by the Kremlin.

Mr. Kasyanov, a former Kremlin insider who has become a critic of the centralization of power and official corruption under President Vladimir V. Putin, had not been expected to campaign on an even footing against Dmitri A. Medvedev, the Kremlin's candidate. Mr. Putin, who is nearing the end of his second term, is not permitted to run again under Russian law.)

Mr. Medvedev, a first deputy prime minister, has been receiving fawning coverage each day on the broadcasts of national television stations, which are state-controlled. With the backing of the Kremlin, the government and Russia's largest political party -- all led by Mr. Putin -- Mr. Medvedev's campaign has nearly bottomless resources.

But Mr. Kasyanov had been campaigning and leading rallies nonetheless, trying to use his candidacy to stump against what he described as the Kremlin's crimes, excessive concentration of power and deep-rooted fear of political plurality.

He contended that opinion polls indicating that he had only a tiny fraction of voter support were a result of pressure and rigging by the state. He said that he had actually had the support of more than a quarter of Russia's voters -- enough to force a runoff in a five-way race that could rattle the Kremlin and threaten its monopoly on power.

Mr. Kasyanov's campaign had previously said that the election officials' rejection of signatures on his registration documents was a government trick to keep him off the ballot. The signatures his supporters collected were valid, his staff said.

It was not clear whether he would appeal to the courts. The Russian judicial system is also tightly controlled by the Kremlin, and Mr. Kasyanov signaled that he understood that there was almost no chance a judge would overturn the government's decision.

The rejection of Mr. Kasyanov left Mr. Medvedev facing a weak set of opponents: Gennadi A. Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party; Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, the ultranationalist leader of the Liberal Democratic Party; and Andrei V. Bogdanov, the leader of the small and relatively unknown Democratic Party.

All three of Mr. Medvedev's opponents have been accused of running at the Kremlin's direction, or at least with its approval, to create the appearance of a contest.