RUSSIA:Russia's future president, Dmitry Medvedev, yesterday began his election campaign by acknowledging that Russia was in the grip of rampant corruption and what he termed "legal nihilism".
In his first address since being registered as a candidate for Russia's March presidential election, Mr Medvedev said official corruption had now reached a "huge scale". He was also critical of widespread disregard for the law.
Mr Medvedev's unusual comments came as Russia's election commission moved to disqualify the only democratic challenger in the March 2nd poll - opposition candidate Mikhail Kasyanov.
The commission said it was launching an investigation into signatures collected by Mr Kasyanov's supporters, claiming many of them had been forged. Under Kremlin rules candidates not represented in Russia's Duma need to collect two million signatures.
Yesterday Mr Kasyanov - who served as Russia's prime minister before falling out with president Vladimir Putin in 2004 - described the investigation as political. He said government agencies had harassed his supporters, forcing them to denounce themselves.
Last month Mr Putin anointed Mr Medvedev, Russia's first deputy prime minister, as his presidential successor. Mr Medvedev's victory in the March election is a foregone conclusion.
Mr Medvedev also suggested that the West had misunderstood Russia. "Russia in the future will continue developing as a nation open for dialogue with the international community," he said.
Most analysts, however, believe he is unlikely to change Mr Putin's hawkish foreign policy, not least because Mr Medvedev has asked Mr Putin to carry on in government. Both men will then run the country, with Mr Putin the senior partner, observers believe.
Mr Kasyanov said yesterday he suspected the Kremlin was trying to avoid a proper contest in the March 2nd election. "It seems the authorities are afraid of a direct political contest," he said. "This is a last test for the authorities. They have to answer the question: do Russian citizens have the right to elect a president? This is a watershed moment."
An outspoken critic of the Kremlin, Mr Kasyanov has little chance of rivalling Mr Medvedev for the presidency: opinion polls give him about 1 per cent support.
But his removal from the ballot would strengthen accusations that the election lacks legitimacy. The Kremlin is already under fire after western observers said a parliamentary election last year was one-sided and unfair.
Tatyana Chernyshova, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor general's office, said prosecutors in two regions had uncovered evidence that campaign workers had forged thousands of the signatures submitted by Mr Kasyanov.
"A criminal investigation has been opened . . . into the falsification of election documents," she told reporters. The investigation focused on the Volga River region of Mariy El and the Yaroslav region in central Russia.
If Mr Kasyanov is taken off the ballot, the field challenging Mr Medvedev will be reduced to three: nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov and Andrei Bogdanov, head of the small Democratic Party.
Analysts say some in the Kremlin fear Mr Kasyanov could use his insider knowledge from his time as prime minister to try to discredit Mr Medvedev's campaign.
The central election commission will make the final decision on whether to disqualify Mr Kasyanov. It said it had found a significant number of forgeries but was still checking the signatures. - (Guardian service; Additional reporting: Reuters)