01/24/2008

News / Putin Choice Criticizes 'Legal Nihilism'

MOSCOW (AP) — Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's presumed next president, criticized Russia's "legal nihilism" and called for stepping up the fight against corruption, opening his campaign Tuesday with a careful speech before a Kremlin-organized forum.

Separately, prosecutors opened a forgery investigation into another candidate — an ex-prime minister who turned against President Vladimir Putin and is now running in opposition, the Russian prosecutor-general's office said Tuesday.

Medvedev's address to a Kremlin-organized forum of civil-society organizations, delivered in measured tones and fastidious pronunciation, dealt mostly with generalities and stayed far from Putin's increasing penchant for aggressive and biting comments.

Medvedev's strongest statements came on corruption.

"Russia is a country of legal nihilism at the level ... that no European country can boast of," he said.

"Corruption in the official structures has a huge scale and the fight against it should be a national program," Medvedev said.

Putin, who is constitutionally banned from seeking a third consecutive term, has endorsed Medvedev, giving him an overwhelming advantage.

Other presidential candidates, including Mikhail Kasyanov, now under investigation for forgery, have focused their campaigns on criticism of the Kremlin.

The forgery case involves signatures on the petitions nominating Kasyanov to run in the March 2 presidential election, the spokeswoman for the prosecutor-general, Tatiana Chernyshova, said on state television.

A spokeswoman for Kasyanov's campaign, Yelena Dikun, said the office had received no information from the prosecutor about the case, which she described as being "political pressure."

Kasyanov was a prime minister under Putin, but was dismissed in 2004 and later became a strong critic of the Kremlin, saying that democracy was being strangled and constitutional rights violated.

He had called for a boycott of the Dec. 2 parliamentary elections, claiming the Kremlin had raised insurmountable barriers for its opponents. Some opposition figures have been unable to get on the presidential ballot.

Kasyanov on Saturday issued a statement bitterly complaining of official harassment, saying the interior and justice ministries "have conducted a coordinated campaign of pressure against me since I handed over the registration documents for the presidential elections.

"In numerous Russian regions, crude intimidation has been deployed against people officially registered as campaign workers. ... People have been threatened, intimidated and forced to admit to committing illegal acts," he said.

Russia's most visible liberal opposition figure, former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, is unable to run but said his supporters were not allowed to rent halls for a nomination gathering — a requirement under Russian law for candidates that are not members of registered parties.

The final candidate list for the election is to be announced on Sunday.

In addition to Medvedev, two other candidates have registered, but neither presents serious competition: Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov and Vladimir Zhirinovsky, head of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party.

Chernyshova said suspected false signatures for Kasyanov's campaign were found in the Yaroslavl and Mari-El regions.

The head of Kasyanov's campaign in Mari-El, Rustam Abdullin, was detained this month and found in possession of nominating petitions with suspected false signatures.

If more than 5 percent of the signatures submitted by a campaign are forged, the candidate cannot be registered to run, the ITAR-Tass news agency cited Central Elections Commission member Yelena Dubrovina as saying.

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
Associated Press writers Jim Heintz and Peter Leonard contributed to this report.

Source: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iGYTq3DwvCp2KYon4hu6_y3zndSwD8UAVD5O0

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