Liberal veteran Yavlinskiy may be out of presidential race

Two of the seven would-be candidates in the Russian presidential race, including veteran liberal Grigoriy Yavlinsky, may lose the right to run as the state commission has found a number of violations in their application papers.

­Russian news agency Itar-Tass quoted a member of the Central Elections Commission, Elena Dubrovina, as saying that a random check of the signatures required to support candidates` applications indicated that Grigoriy Yavlnsky of the Yabloko party and Irkutsk Region governor Dmitry Mezentsev might be denied the right to run. In both candidates` applications, the number of non-valid signatures exceeded the maximum of 5 per cent. The Interfax news agency quoted Dubrovina as saying that the share of the non-valid signatures was a bit over 10 percent both in Yavlinskiy`s and in Mezentsev`s cases.

However, earlier on Monday morning, Interfax quoted a source in the Central Elections Commission as saying that a preliminary check had indicated that the number of invalid signatures for Yavlinskiy was about 26 per cent.

According to RIA-Novosti`s unnamed source in the Central Election Commission, the random check has shown that over 23 per cent of signatures for Yavlinskiy were invalid.

Mezentsev`s election headquarters confirmed news of the signature issue, but Yavlinskiy`s staff declined to comment.

However, the chairman of the Yabloko party, Sergey Mutrokhin, has accused election officials of nobbling Yavlinskiy for political reasons. "We have all signatures collected and we have enough of them. Any picks into this are politically motivated," RIA-Novosti quoted Mitrokhin as saying. The politician went on to say that the decision on granting the registration to a candidate or denying it was politically motivated as well. "I have a feeling that Yavlinskiy will be removed from the elections," Mitrokhin said.

A final decision will be taken after the commission checks the rest of the signatures.

According to Russian election law, independent candidates must provide the signatures of 2 million supporters to the Central Elections Commission in order to register for the poll. The deadline for submissions expired last week and the commission must make a final decision on registration before January 29.

Three candidates are running as independents this year - the billionaire-turned-politician Mikhail Prokhorov, the governor of Eastern Siberia`s Irkutsk Region, Dmitry Mezentsev, and the founder of the liberal Yabloko party, Grigory Yavlinskiy.

Four more people are registered as party candidates. They are Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who is running on United Russia`s ticket; the leader of the Communist Party, Gennadiy Zyuganov; the head of the Liberal Democratic Party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky; and the leader of the Fair Russia party, Sergey Mironov.

The date of the presidential election is March 4.

sections: Politics