Special detachment got a hold of him. It'll take the undertaker weeks to get the smile off his face.
Posted on 2/9/2004, 12:12:36 AM by gdyniawitawa
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian police have launched a hunt for a political rival of President Vladimir Putin set to challenge him in forthcoming elections after his wife reported him missing since Thursday night.
Ivan Rybkin, a strong critic of Putin, is one of a finalised list of candidates for a March 14 election which Putin is widely expected to win easily, securing a second term in the Kremlin.
Rybkin's wife officially reported him missing on Sunday and police called on FSB state security to help in the search.
"His wife has made a report," a police spokesman said. "He left home at around 7 p.m. on Thursday and since then he has not been seen."
Rybkin, 57, a fixture on the political scene since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and a former speaker of parliament's lower house, is a pro-market centre-left politician.
He is challenging Putin as an independent with the backing of exiled business magnate Boris Berezovsky, who accuses Putin of crushing independent media and duping public opinion in his drive against Chechen separatism.
News of Rybkin's disappearance emerged as the list of approved challengers for the presidency was finalised on Sunday after days of checking signatures of support for authenticity.
The Central Electoral Commission approved populist left-wing economist Sergei Glazyev and Irina Khakamada, the only runner from pro-business forces routed in December's parliamentary election.
Their registration takes the total of candidates challenging Putin to six, including Rybkin. The others are candidates from the Communist Party and the extreme nationalist Liberal Democratic Party and the speaker of parliament's upper house.
While clearing candidates to run, election authorities kept pressure on Rybkin and Glazyev saying there had been irregularities in the way signatures had been collected and prosecutors would continue investigating.
NERVES FRAYED
But Rybkin's mysterious disappearance -- with public nerves frayed from Friday's bomb blast on Moscow's underground system that killed 39 people -- rattled Khakamada.
"No private security will help if certain forces and authorities decide to do something," she told reporters.
But few see any possibility of a credible election challenge to Putin, who has a rating of 70 percent or more in opinion polls.
Rybkin, whose campaign has been taking on an increasingly anti-Putin tone, has no chance of beating the president and opinion polls have given him an approval rating of less than one percent.
On February 2, a full-page advertisement in the Berezovsky-owned daily Kommersant on behalf of Rybkin declared: "Putin has no right to power in Russia" and said Putin's activities were on a par with "state crimes".
On Thursday, the day he vanished, Rybkin publicly complained that officials from the general prosecutor's office had searched his Moscow offices, detained a key campaign worker and taken away computers.
On the post article page, the full URL only needs to go in the 'Source URL' box.
In the 'Source' box, you needn't put the full URL. Just type the name of the source you got it from (in this case, Reuters).
Then when you post the article, you'll get a nice short word that is hotlinked instead of the long URL.
This:
As opposed to this:
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=454503§ion=news
Putin has 70%, the missing gy around 1%, who has the majority of the other 29%? Look there.
No-one will ever challenge Comrade Putin anymore, he is President-for-Life now...
Special detachment got a hold of him. It'll take the undertaker weeks to get the smile off his face.
LOL ...just kidding.
Missed you a lot though. Luv your humor.
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