Russia: Challengers (candidates) Refuse To Debate

[Dover]

Friday, Feb. 13, 2004.

Challengers Refuse to Debate

Four candidates challenging President Vladimir Putin in March's election refused to debate each other in the campaign's first television debate Thursday, protesting Putin's absence.

Putin, who is expected to easily win re-election, previously announced he would not participate in the debates.

At the taping of the first debate, the challengers initially answered questions from a studio audience and host Pyotr Marchenko about how they would tackle poverty. But then they rejected the host's request that they debate.

"Bring Putin here and we will have a debate with him," independent liberal candidate Irina Khakamada said, to applause from the audience of mostly public-sector workers on a set at state-controlled Channel One television.

Calling it pointless to debate with anyone but Putin, "my main competitor," Communist candidate Nikolai Kharitonov said that by ignoring the debates "Putin deprives the population of the right to choose."

The other two candidates were Sergei Glazyev of the nationalist Rodina bloc and Oleg Malyshkin of the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party, who arrived late after election officials ruled that party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky could not appear in his stead.

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http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/02/13/002.html