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Gorbachev rebukes Putin, criticizes elections

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, right, stands on the doorstep of 10 Downing Street, London, with former Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev on Monday. PHOTO: AP

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sharply criticized Russia's electoral system in remarks published on Monday and called for extensive reforms to a system that has secured power for Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin's inner circle.

"Something is wrong with our elections, and our electoral system needs a major adjustment," Gorbachev said.

The remarks, made in a telephone interview on Sunday but held for a day by the Interfax news service, followed the Russian government's rejection of the only serious opposition candidate in the March 2 presidential election.

The timing was pointed, and the remarks were the most vocal criticism to date by a prominent Russian political figure of the state of the country's politics as Putin prepares to pass power to a chosen successor. They were ignored by Russian TV news broadcasts, which are controlled by the Kremlin.

The opposition candidate, former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov, was denied a place on the ballot Sunday by the Central Election Commission, which said 13 percent of the more than 2 million signatures submitted with his registration documents were invalid.

Kasyanov has said that the signatures are valid and that the Kremlin ordered the commission to block his candidacy as a means of ensuring the election of First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, the candidate selected by Putin.

Gorbachev's remarks did not address Kasyanov directly, although Gorbachev's aide Pavel Palazhchenko said they had been in response to a journalist's question about the end of the Kasyanov candidacy.

Gorbachev said the election's result was "predictable from the outset" and "predetermined by the enormous role that Vladimir Putin played."

Gorbachev has often been publicly supportive of Putin, and credited him with undoing much of the disorder of the 1990s under former Russian president Boris Yeltsin, a bitter rival of Gorbachev's. But he has also taken independent positions, including supporting Novaya Gazeta, an independent newspaper that fiercely criticizes Russian officials.

Among the changes Gorbachev recommended was the end of exclusively party-list elections for parliament, which prevent individual candidates from running and keep the assignment of seats in the hands of party leaders. United Russia, the largest party, is controlled by Putin.

Meanwhile, Medvedev has refused to meet his rivals for the presidency in live TV debates ahead of the election.

His opponents denounced his decision yesterday as unfair and said it would make it even harder for opposition candidates to gain airtime to get across their views.

"Dmitry Medvedev has informed the Central Election Commission about his decision not to take part in joint events," a member of his campaign staff said.
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