The presidential race formally kicked off in Russia last Wednesday, when the date for elections to choose a successor to President Putin was set for March 2, 2008. Under the Constitution, the current president, Vladimir Putin, is forbidden from seeking a third term.
Kasyanov, as a liberal independent candidate, will have to collect at least 2 million signatures from supporters, which will then need to be registered with the Election Commission before December 18.
Candidates put forward by those parties which overcame the 7% election threshold at Sunday's elections will be spared the necessity of collecting signatures.
As the People's Democratic Union is not a registered political party, Kasyanov's nomination will have to be formally approved by an action group on Saturday.
Speaking at the congress, which gathered 109 delegates from the union's 61 regional branches, Kasyanov criticized recent parliamentary elections in which the pro-Kremlin United Russia party won 64% of the vote. President Putin headed the party's candidate list.
Kasyanov, who was Russian prime minister from May 2000 through February 2004, said that during the election campaign the parties were not on a "level playing field" and did not have equal access to media. Therefore, he said, he had not voted in the polls for the first time in his life. He also urged for political reforms in Russia.
Kasyanov is heavily associated in Russia with the Yeltsin years, which saw widespread hardship in Russia. The former premier enjoys minuscule levels of support amongst the Russian electorate, mainly due to bribery allegations related to his time in office. He is commonly known as 'Misha two-percent,' a reference to the amount of 'commission' he supposedly charged. 'Misha' is the diminutive version of the Russian name Mikhail.
A number of politicians have already announced their intention to run in the 2008 presidential elections. These include the Communist Party and the Liberal Democratic Party leaders - Gennady Zyuganov and Vladimir Zhirinovsky, respectively.
Other figures who have spoken of plans to run in the elections include liberal Grigory Yavlinsky, ex-first deputy premier Boris Nemtsov, Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, and chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, recently jailed for five days following an opposition march.
