Authorities Put Kasparov in “Check”!
Garry Kasparov, the former chess world champion, has transferred his strategic prowess from the world chess circuit toward reforming Russia’s increasingly authoritarian democracy. What he is finding out though, is that playing with the Kremlin doesn’t always go by the same strategy that he use to use in dominating on the chess board.
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SINCE RETIRING from professional chess in 2005, Garry Kasparov has been festering like a thorn in the Kremlin’s side. His is the strategy behind Other Russia, a coalition of disparate political groupsbentonsecuringfairelectionsinanincreasingly centralised state. At a St Petersburg rally last month, one of the biggest against president Vladimir Putin’s administration, 130 of Kasparov’s colleagues were detained for disrupting the peace. Further demonstrations – though officially banned – are expected this weekend. The former world number one, for his part, has been denounced on state television as a CIA spy. After decades of intense preparation, aggressive match play and thorough analysis, he has entered a new, and unexpected, game.
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A good chess player always thinks several steps ahead of his opponent. I am not sure if today’s protest, and subsequent arrest, was a delicately timed move or a play in the risky (and sometimes fatal) game of chance against the Putin regime. What is certain though, is that Kasparov is demonstrating that there is budding life in the fractured anti-government (democratic) movement in Russia.
Kasparov has been the de facto leader of what have been termed “Dissenters Marches” that protest the economic and social policies of President Vladimir Putin as well as a series of Kremlin actions that critics say has stripped Russians of many political rights. These protests have attracted a large police presence and has been seen by many as another symbol of the growing stranglehold of the Kremlin on the individual freedoms of Russia.
Saturday’s street protest in Moscow was led by Kasparov and a coalition of politicians who defied authorities and called on government reform. This spurred beatings and hundreds of arrests. Kasparov was detained for several hours after finally being released and slapped with a fine.
“It is no longer a country … where the government tries to pretend it is playing by the letter and spirit of the law,” Kasparov said outside the court building, appearing unfazed by his detention. “We now stand somewhere between Belarus and Zimbabwe,” two dictatorships that have cracked down on opposition, he said.
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Kasparov Speaks To Sky News
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