20,000 rally in Moscow as poll anger boils over

MORE than 22,000 people packed a Moscow square Saturday to demand free and fair local polls, incensed by the authorities’ refusal to put popular opposition candidates on the ballot.

Staging their largest protest in years, opposition leaders such as President Vladimir Putin’s top opponent Alexei Navalny and ordinary Muscovites rallied after authorities refused to register independent candidates seeking to contest the September vote for the capital’s parliament.

“This is my city!” the crowd chanted during the two-hour-long sanctioned rally.

“We will show them this is a dangerous game,” Navalny bellowed from a stage.

“We should fight for our candidates,” he said as the huge crowd cheered and waved Russian flags.

The 43-year-old threatened an even bigger rally next Saturday, near the mayor’s office, unless Moscow’s authorities register a new crop of popular politicians including Ilya Yashin and Lyubov Sobol within seven days.

After the rally, 16 independent candidates issued a joint statement demanding access to the ballot and accusing Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin of sparking a “political crisis” in the city of some 15 million.

Speaking at the rally, Navalny ally Sobol, who has been on a hunger strike for a week to protest the authorities’ refusal to allow her to run, vowed to keep up the fight.

“I am sure that we will win,” said the visibly fatigued 31-year-old lawyer, propped up by an ally on stage.

Many ordinary Russians have slammed what they called the blatant impunity of officials, saying people’s patience was running thin.

“We are angry at the lawlessness,” Alexander Polovinkin, a 21-year-old student, told AFP.

Police detained a handful of protesters, said the OVD-Info monitor, adding one of them had his arm broken.