RUSSIA: Supporters rally for Russian dissident and writer Vladimir Bukovsky's Presidential bid as Russian Union of Social Democrats elects Mikhail Gorbachev as its leader

Rally in support of Russian dissident and writer Vladimir Bukovsky's presidential bid takes place in central Moscow and Russian Union of Social Democrats elects Mikhail Gorbachev as its leader. About 50 supporters of Vladimir Bukovsky, a Russian dissident writer, gathered in central Moscow on Saturday (October 20) to express their support for Bukovsky's decision to run for presidency in the upcoming elections. Vladimir Bukovsky spent years in prisons and psychiatric hospitals as punishment for his anti-Soviet campaigning before he was flown to Switzerland in 1976 and swapped for Luis Corvalan, a Communist politician who had been in jail in Chile. Now a pensioner living in Britain's university town of Cambridge, he returned to Russia after a group of intellectuals opposed to President Vladimir Putin suggested to Bukovsky he run in next year's presidential election. Bukovsky arrived in Russia on October 16, for the first time in 15 years. At the rally he told supporters that he had agreed to run, but winning is not his goal. "The main reason, the main purpose I have is to help the opposition to resurrect itself, to rebuild itself and to try to put them together, to overcome all the splits they have and schisms, you know, all the problems they have. And if at the end of the day we will achieve that and there will be a new united movement of opposition in Russia, then my purpose is achieved, he said. Putin is hugely popular in Russia and credited with restoring stability and national pride, but his critics say he has crushed democratic freedoms. He is to step down next year and one of his team is likely to be elected as his replacement. Bukovsky, 64, is a rank outsider for the presidency. Opinion polls show most voters will back whichever candidate Putin endorses as his successor. Most but not all. "Of course, I do not believe that he will be registered [as presidential candidate] and that he can become a president at the upcoming elections, but nonetheless, Bukovsky is the choice one cannot be ashamed of," said Vladimir Pribylovsky, a political analyst who attended the rally. But Bukovsky's bid could fall foul of a rule that requires candidates to have lived in Russia for not less than 10 years. Some lawyers say this means the 10 years immediately before the election. Also on Saturday, the founding congress of the new party Russian Union of Social Democrats elected the former USSR president, Mikhail Gorbachev its leader. The new party was set up mainly on Gorbachev's initiative after the Supreme Court's ruling to disband the Social Democratic Party of Russia because it did not comply with the new law on political parties. Gorbachev was the founder and the leader of the Social-Democratic party but later resigned from that post, retaining the party membership. Earlier Gorbachev has said that he was not going to run in the March presidential election. The Union of Social Democrats is planning to register as a political party and take part in the parliamentary election in 2012.

ITN Source | October 21, 2007

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