Fierce opponent? Lawyer seen as the only Opposition leader who stands a fighting chance of challenging Putin
Moscow,
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny cleared the first hurdle on Sunday towards taking part in next year’s presidential election, even though the central election commission has previously ruled him ineligible to run.

Navalny, 41, is a fierce opponent of President Vladimir Putin, who is widely expected to win re-election in March, extending his 17 years in power.

On Sunday, Navalny, a veteran campaigner against corruption among Russia’s elite, won the initial support of 742 people at a gathering in a district of Moscow, above the minimum 500 required to initiate a presidential bid.

“There is no large-scale support for Putin and his rule in this country,” Navalny told the gathering, describing himself as a “real candidate” for the election and threatening a boycott of the vote by his supporters if he is barred from running.

But Navalny now needs to be officially registered as a candidate by Russia’s central election commission, which has previously said he was ineligible due to a suspended prison sentence that he says was politically motivated.

Navalny has been jailed three times this year on charges of repeatedly organising public meetings and rallies in violation of existing laws. He says the Kremlin is deliberately trying to thwart his political ambitions.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled in October that Navalny’s conviction for fraud in 2014 was “arbitrary” and ordered Moscow to pay him compensation.

In Moscow, finding a premises for the Sunday event had been so hard that Navalny’s campaign pitched a huge tent in a park on the snow-covered shores of the Moscow River. Yury Berchenko, one of some 300 supporters who gathered in the tent, called Navalny an “honest and sincere” man, saying he should be allowed to contest the vote. “He mobilises people,” Berchenko told AFP. “Such a man should be president or at least take part in a debate and ask difficult questions.”

Pensioner Marina Kurbatskaya also showed up in the picturesque park to support Navalny as she criticised “lies and thievery” in Russia. “If Navalny is not allowed to run I am not going to vote,” she told AFP. “I don’t see anyone else who I want to become president.”

On Saturday Russia’s ruling party United Russia pledged “all possible support” to the 65-year-old Putin in his bid to win a further six years in power in the March election.

Also on Saturday, the Russian Communist Party named its presidential candidate, Pavel Grudinin, 57. The party came second after United Russia in the 2016 parliamentary elections.

On Sunday, Russian property developer Sergei Polonsky, who has been convicted of defrauding investors, also secured enough initial backing to seek clearance from the election commission to take part in the presidential race.

Others planning to run include television personality Ksenia Sobchak, whose late father was Putin’s boss in the early 1990s, journalist Ekaterina Gordon. — Agencies