Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov was nominated as his party's candidate for a presidential election in March 2008 at a congress near Moscow on Saturday, an AFP reporter saw. A total of 215 out of the 218 delegates at the congress voted for Zyuganov.
Zyuganov has already taken part in two presidential elections, in both of which he came second in against a Kremlin-backed candidate. In 2000, he garnered 29 percent of the vote against 53 percent for Vladimir Putin. In his nomination speech, Zyuganov criticised the Kremlin for enforcing "total control" over Russia's political landscape and said there had been "mass falsification" of votes in parliamentary elections on December 2.