CEC bars dissident Bukovsky from running for Russian president

MOSCOW, December 22 (RIA Novosti) - Russian election authorities barred on Saturday Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky from running in presidential polls in March 2008 on grounds he has not lived in Russia for the last 30 years.

A writer and publicist, Bukovsky served a total of 12 years in labor camps, prisons, and psychiatric hospitals in the Soviet Union for his anti-Soviet views and has spent the last 31 years in the United Kingdom. He has Russian and British citizenship.

A Central Election Commission (CEC) member, Nikolai Konkin, said on Saturday that under Russian law a presidential contender has to live in Russia for at least 10 years before being nominated.

The Constitutional Court earlier rejected an appeal filed by the head of Bukovsky's action group about a law denying people with dual citizenship to run in general elections.

Bukovsky, 65, was released in 1976 and deported to the United Kingdom, in exchange for Chilean Communist leader Luis Corvalan. The dissident was given Russian citizenship in 1992 by late president Boris Yeltsin.