PUTIN'S STANCE
Official campaign rules envisage live television debates among candidates but in past elections Putin and his United Russia party have refused to take part, saying they saw no worthy politicians with whom to discuss policy.Senior United Russia member Vyacheslav Volodin said Medvedev was meeting ordinary citizens in an extensive campaign across Russia and that television debates would disrupt his schedule."The most important thing for us is real deeds, meeting people and solving actual problems, not wrangling in a TV studio," Volodin was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.The election watchdog arm of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe said it had not decided whether to go ahead with what would be a limited monitoring mission after the Kremlin had notified it of the restrictions."These conditions don't allow us to carry out a meaningful observation and therefore fulfill our mandate," said a spokesman for the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). "Russia's letter of invitation does contain serious restrictions both in terms of the number of observers, which is 70, and more importantly the timeframe for observation," said the spokesman."What we're doing is responding to the letter ... and asking that these restrictions be reviewed in the very nearest future and based on this exchange we'll make our final decision."
Last December, the ODIHR pulled out from plans to monitor a Russian parliamentary election in a dispute over visa delays and observer restrictions. Other observer teams heavily criticized the restrictions as unfair to opposition parties.For more on Russia's presidential election, please see our blog "Operation Successor" at blogs.reuters.com/russia.
As in the days of Noah...