Kasparov picked to fight Russia presidential election
September 30, 2007

MOSCOW (AFP) – Chess great Garry Kasparov was named Sunday as the
Other Russia opposition coalition’s candidate for 2008 presidential
polls, and vowed to fight for democracy against the Kremlin’s
political juggernaut.

Kasparov overwhelmingly won a party congress vote against five other
contenders to run in the March 2, 2008, election to replace President
Vladimir Putin.

"I will do everything possible for the ideas of Other Russia to win.
This will work only if we stay united," he told the meeting, adding
the coalition stood for a "democratic and just Russia."

"I know that the road will be difficult," he said, referring to the
group’s regular run-ins with the police and possible negotiations with
other opposition leaders.

He won 379 of 494 votes cast, out-polling other nominees including
former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov and former Central Bank chief
Viktor Gerashchenko.

The Other Russia coalition, comprised of a variety of small groups
opposed to Putin, is heavily handicapped by internal divisions and has
been marginalised by the authorities.

The latest poll by the independent Levada agency shows only some three
percent of Russians will vote for the Other Russia candidate, in a
race certain to be dominated by Kremlin-backed candidates.

While Putin has promised the elections will give Russian voters a free
choice, most observers expect a carefully managed transition to a
figure favoured by the current administration.

Putin is obliged to stand down having completed two presidential
terms, although he has said he will retain an unspecified influential
role.

Kasparov frequently attacks Putin’s Kremlin for its alleged corruption
and "dictatorship," and its dominance of the media to silence genuine
opposition parties.

Other Russia is planning a "March of the Discontented" protest in
Moscow on October 8, the first anniversary of the murder of journalist
Anna Politkovskaya.

Previous Other Russia rallies have been violently suppressed by riot
police, while Kasparov himself was detained at a Moscow airport just
before flying to attend a rally in the city of Samara earlier this
year.

The largest elements within the Other Russia coalition are Kasparov’s
United Civil Front party and the National Bolsheviks of writer Eduard
Limonov.

In the end, the entire congress — which met in an old concert hall to
pick a candidate — revolved around the personality of Kasparov.

"We must concentrate our minds on who is best-known in the outside
world," said one delegate casting a vote for Kasparov.

The coalition was co-founded by Kasparov, 44, who turned to politics
in 2005 after a chess career that marked him as one of the game’s
greatest.

He has compared his current political battles with his famous chess
duels with Anatoly Karpov in the 1980s.

"Back then the chess system wanted to maintain a cosy status quo,
avoiding any candidate worthy of the name to fight Karpov," he has
said. "The political situation in Russia today reminds me of that
time."

Born of Armenian-Jewish parents in Baku, the capital of the former
Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, in 1963, Kasparov took up chess at the
age of six.

He was USSR junior champion by the age of 13, before becoming the
youngest world chess champion at the age of 22 in 1985, having beaten
his compatriot Karpov.

Copyright © 2007 AFP