Chess player Gary Kasparov announces his run for president in 2008, and another politician expected to challenge Putin calls for a return to democratic values.
By Simon Tisdall SALON
March 15, 2005 | The decision by Gary Kasparov, the world's top chess player, to retire from the game and devote his talents to opposing Vladimir Putin will hardly induce the Kremlin's grandmaster to resign his position. But Kasparov's move reflects broader, increasingly vocal discontent over the president's perceived descent into authoritarianism. The Putin paradox is that the more he tries to exert control, the more uncontrollable a changing Russia may ultimately prove to be.
Kasparov's assertion that the country "is heading down the wrong path" echoed the words of a more formidable political figure, Mikhail Kasyanov, prime minister during Putin's first term and finance minister under Boris Yeltsin.Accusing Russia's leader of abandoning democratic values by stifling political pluralism, undermining judicial and media independence, and turning his back on a free-market economy, Kasyanov called on the democratic opposition to unite. "I have reached the view that not one of these values is being implemented or respected," he said last month. "The direction has changed ... The country is on the wrong track."
Gorbachev and Yeltsin have spoken out against the diminutive would-be autocrat . . .
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New Yorker
Garry Kimovich Kasparov was born Gary Weinstein in Baku, Azerbaijan, USSR in 1963.
Chess Champ
I'LL BET - WACKO JACKO'S GONNA BEAT IT!
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