Little Chance Left of Kasyanov Candidacy

Charlene Keeler/ 25 Jan 08/ 3:50/ Political Relations
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2008/01/25/011.html

The attempt of Kasyanov from last week seems to be futile. The Central Elections Commission is saying that over 13% of the hopeful presidential candidate’s 2 million+ signatures are invalid. An investigation has been opened in regards to such a high percentage of invalid signatures. According to Kasyanov’s spokeswoman, Dikun, most of the supposed forgeries were declared invalid because of small errors such as incorrect passport numbers and dates. Some in the Commission say that such a large percentage of invalid signatures should automatically disqualify Kasyanov from being accepted as a candidate. The number of invalid signatures should be below 5%. Those that have had to collect signatures, such as the Democrat Party’s Andrei Bogdanov, successfully collected his 2 million with only 3% invalidity. However, there is speculation that Bogdanov’s party was created by the Kremlin to “fragment the opposition.”
Other candidates put forth for the March 2 election are Dmitry Medvedev of United Russia, the Liberal Democratic Party's Vladimir Zhirinovsky; and Gennady Zyuganov from the Communists. These candidates do not have the pressure of collecting signatures put upon them since they are backed by legitimate parties.
It seems to me that the Commission does not want anyone running in the election that is not approved by the current officials. If the Kremlin doesn’t want someone to run in the election, they have ways of preventing that person from running. Russian politics still contains much corruption despite democratization. The favorite is still Medvedev since he is backed by the majority party, United Russia, and Putin. Since Kasyanov is from an independent party, there would be a very small chance that he would be elected, but there would still be some hope that even someone that is not from one of the prevalent parties has a chance, even if it just the simple act of running in the election. But judging by the current events concerning Kasyanov, it seems very unlikely that he will be allowed to run.