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Muscovites rally in support for direct mayor elections

25 September 2010 23:56 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Hundreds of Muscovites gathered in Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square on Saturday afternoon for a sanctioned rally to demand the reinstatement of direct mayor elections, APA reports quoting RIA Novosti.

In 2004 then-president Vladimir Putin abolished direct elections of regional heads in favor of presidential nominations. The initiative also concerned the mayor of the Russian capital, which has a federal city status is therefore considered a separate Russian region.

"We have been deprived of any influence on the [mayor nomination] process. We are being ruled by a mayor who has been sitting in his chair for more than 18 years... The Moscow mayor will turn 75 next year... It’s high time for him to retire," the rally’s organizers said on the event’s official website.

One of the event’s organizers, Vladimir Ryzhkov, was quoted as saying in a Russian-language article on the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s website that it was just a "coincidence" that the rally took place amid a large-scale media campaign against incumbent Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov.

The number of participants varies according to different sources. Moscow police puts the number at some 450 people, while Radio Liberty says "more than a thousand" attended.

"The event went on calmly," a spokesman for the Moscow police department said.

Moscow and the Belarusian capital Minsk are the only capital cities in Europe where citizens are not entitled to directly elect their mayor.