Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny has been barred by the Russian Election Committee from contesting the Presidential elections in 2018. In a unanimous 12-0 ruling with one person abstaining, the committee cited a conviction for fraud as the reason Navalny could not take part as a presidential candidate next year.
Irked by the development, Navalny had since called for a boycott of the elections scheduled to take place in March 2018.
Navalny who made his decision known in a prerecorded message released after the election committee took the decision alleged that Putin was manipulating the system in his favor.
"We are declaring a strike by voters. We will ask everyone to boycott these elections. We will not recognise the result. Only Putin and the candidates he has handpicked are taking part in it. Going to the polls right now is to vote for lies and corruption.
"It's you, Vladimir Putin, who turned this country into a source of personal enrichment for yourself, your family and your friends. It's why you shouldn't be president any more, it's why you're a bad president."
Navalny, a leading opposition in Russia was the driving force behind massive anti-Putin protests in 2011 and 2012, rallying tens of thousands of people across the country. In 2013, he was first sentenced on embezzlement charges, after being accused of defrauding the Kirov regional budget of about $270,000.
The ruling was quashed by European Court of Human Rights last year Russia's with the Supreme Court ordering a retrial. He was handed a five-year suspended prison sentence and a fine of $8,500 in the retrial.
