By RIA Novosti
Moscow : Russia’s Communist Party has nominated its leader Gennady Zyuganov to run for the presidential elections due in March 2008.
Agreement on Zyuganov’s candidature was reached Saturday during the party’s congress, at which 215 of the total 218 party delegates voted in favour of the veteran leader.
Zyuganov, 63, will be running for the president for the third time and is the fourth officially nominated candidate so far.
The other three are leader of the Democratic Party of Russia Andrei Bogdanov, outspoken ultra nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov, who pledged to promote freedom, competition and dissolve the current parliament elected during the widely criticized polls.
Chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, who was recently jailed for five days following an opposition march, was the first to withdraw from the presidential race after failing to find a venue for his action group meeting.
The ruling United Russia party backed by three other pro-Kremlin parties had last Monday announced First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev as its presidential candidate after being backed by President Vladimir Putin.
With the strong support from Putin and three other parties, Medvedev has been seen as a front-runner to head Kremlin.