Gorbachev raps Russia's "mockery" of democracyMOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's disputed regional elections have made a mockery of the country's democratic credentials, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said in an interview published on Monday.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's ruling United Russia party won a landslide victory in the October 11 regional elections, but opposition parties have alleged the votes were rigged and briefly marched out of parliament last week in protest.
"In everyone's eyes, the elections turned into a mockery of the people and showed a deep disrespect for their voices," Gorbachev was quoted as saying in the opposition Novaya Gazeta newspaper, which he part-owns.
"The party of power gained the result it needed by discrediting political institutions and the very party itself," Gorbachev was quoted as saying.
Gorbachev, who is reviled by many Russians for presiding over the collapse of the Soviet Union, has previously said the United Russia party is more servile than the Soviet Communist Party which he used to lead. (Slight exaggeration here - the Russian people now think Gorbachev is irrelevant.) [Continued]
3 comments:
I covered this in my latest article - though rigged elections are a problem, fair elections alone would not unfortunately improve the situation.
By the way, the parties that walked out to protest the election are by no means "opposition parties" (there are no legal opposition parties in Russia, let alone in the parliament). A Just Russia is the Kremlin's socialist "division", while Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (which neither liberal nor democratic) has always supported the Kremlin, and the communists, though less dependent on Putin, have been relatively loyal. This is basically fake opposition. Though their latest move is bizarre and may indicate the possibility of future popular protests against the regime. I'm not saying, however, that these protests will result in anything good. Perhaps Putin's dictatorship will be replaced by a communist or nationalist dictatorship as a result of a social upheaval. That will hardly be better.
Is Kasparov's Solidarity a "real" opposition party/faction?
It's real but it's not legal (not officially registered).
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