Kremlin gets tough ahead of polls

By Richard Galpin
BBC News, Moscow

Mikhail Kasyanov's election bid now hangs in the balance

The opening shots of the Russian presidential election campaign have now been fired in anger.

And it comes as no surprise that the first target is the only genuine opposition candidate hoping to run in the race to the Kremlin - former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, who fell out of favour with President Vladimir Putin in 2004 and has since become an outspoken critic.

Russian prosecutors on Tuesday announced they had opened an investigation into allegations that Mr Kasyanov had been involved in forging a significant proportion of the two million signatures he needs to qualify as a candidate for the 2 March election.

A spokeswoman for the prosecutor general's office alleged that campaign workers for Mr Kasyanov had forged thousands of signatures in the Volga region - far more than the maximum total of 5% of invalid signatures permitted under election rules.

Sunday deadline

So now Mr Kasyanov's fate hangs in the balance.

The authorities are afraid of a direct political contest Mikhail Kasyanov Profile: Mikhail Kasyanov

It could be that this is a fatal blow and if prosecutors do bring charges against him, he may find himself in court along with several of his activists rather than on the campaign trail.

Over the next two days the election commission will examine another tranche of signatures submitted by Mr Kasyanov to see if the pattern of alleged forgery is repeated.

If the commission says it is and if it totals more than 5% then Mr Kasyanov is doomed.

He insists there is still a chance he will be registered when the commission makes its final decision on his application on Sunday.

And the latest reports from official Russian news agencies indicate a slight softening in the commission's position - with a hint that the signatures may have been declared invalid because of a procedural mistake by Mr Kasyanov's campaign team rather than due to forgery.

'Intimidation campaign'

But it is no coincidence that Mr Kasyanov has come under such intense scrutiny.

Mr Putin (right) wants Mr Medvedev to take over as Russia's president

He is a bitter opponent of President Putin and says he has faced almost continuous harassment from the authorities since he was sacked as prime minister.

Responding to this latest action against him, he said his team had faced "a massive, large-scale campaign of intimidation" after he officially stated his intention to run in the election.

And yet, on the face of it, Mr Kasyanov does not pose any real threat to the Kremlin's plan for the succession after President Putin steps down this year.

Mr Putin has already put forward the man he wants to take over as Russia's leader - the diminutive First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

Even though the election campaign has not officially started, Mr Medvedev is enjoying vast amounts of airtime on state-run television channels.

Same tactics

Opinion polls already indicate he will win an easy victory, taking between 60% and 82% of the vote whereas Mr Kasyanov would get just 1%.

So why the need to try to remove Mr Kasyanov from the race?

It seems to boil down to one simple fact - the Kremlin is not prepared to tolerate even the few voices in the Russian wilderness who are trying to speak out against the government.

This was very clear during the parliamentary election in December, when a combination of new electoral laws, harassment and some manipulation of the vote ensured real opposition parties were just a tiny dot on the political horizon or disappeared altogether.

And now with the presidential election less than six weeks away, the authorities are employing the same tactics.