RUSSIA: Allegations of dirty tricks are swirling steadily around the final week of campaigning for Moscow's city elections next weekend, even though the result is not in doubt.
With the popular mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, having thrown his weight behind President Vladimir Putin's United Russia party, there is little doubt that the Kremlin's hold on power in the capital will reflect its dominance on the national stage.
Yet controversy boiled last weekend when hardline nationalist party Rodina - the name means "Motherland" - were barred from the Sunday elections because of a racist advertisement.
A Moscow court ruled the advert, in which a group of men from the Caucuses are shown throwing melon husks into a city park, under the slogan "keep rubbish off the streets", was offensive.
Rodina has complained that banning an entire party for a single commercial, albeit one that was widely aired, is heavy-handed and it is appealing to Moscow city court.
Meanwhile a tiny and hitherto obscure party, Free Russia, has launched adverts attacking an alliance of opposition liberal parties hoping to get back into parliament after four years in the doldrums.
The implosion of liberal parties in recent years has left parliaments, nationally and locally, dominated by Mr Putin's United Russia party, which toes the Kremlin line, with the Communist Party forming the opposition.
An alliance of the liberal Yabloko party, the centrist SPS and the Green Party hopes to win the 10 per cent minimum needed to get deputies on to the 35-seat city parliament.
But Free Russia has taken aim with hardline ads, one showing an apple - Yabloko means "apple" - turning brown and shrivelling up under the slogan "rotten."
There is no liberal representation inside the national parliament, and although Yabloko is aiming for only five seats in Moscow, it would be their first power base for many years. While oil money has showered wealth on this city, the money is not evenly spread, with the middle classes flocking to the liberal cause as they worry about corruption and rising prices.
"It [the campaign] is full of dirty tricks," said Pavel Felgenhauer, a columnist with Moscow's Novaya Gazetta newspaper. "It's not a majority, but there is a very sizable part of the population that is really discontented about what is happening in Russia."
Moscow accounts for four-fifths of Russia's wealth, making these elections in effect a "beauty contest" for the Kremlin's ever more centralized rule.