Alexander Ivanchenko, former chief of the RF Central Election Commission
Photo: Pavel Smertin
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Gorbachev Raised Voice against Elections
Big-name political analysts of Europe and the United States as well as Russia’s scientists and chiefs of Science Academy’s institutions gathered late past week in Château-de-Forge estate near Paris to evaluate the recent presidential and parliamentary elections in Russia. Once president of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev lashed out at today’s political system of the country. In the last half-year, Gorbachev declared, Russia suffered the biggest rollback in its democratic advance.
The event headlined “Elections in Russia, European Union and the United States in Context of the World Election Standards” was arranged by Alexander Lebedev, ex-member of Russia’s parliament and today’s president of the Institute of Political Culture Comparative Research and owner of Château-de-Forge estate. Lebedev opened the conference by saying that Alina Kabaeva wouldn’t attend it. For some reason, the host confined his participation to that opening joke.
According to Moscow Correspondent newspaper, world's ex-star of rhythmic gymnastic, beautiful and charismatic Alina Kabaeva is the alleged next wife of Vladimir Putin.
The first shocking speech of the conference was the address of Russia’s Ambassador to France Alexander Avdeev. Avdeev said Russia’s image in France was far from desired and faulted the media for it. In France, they pay attention to the general underdevelopment of the civic society and political system in Russia and it wouldn’t be easy to dispute that attitude, Avdeev made clear.
The ambassador didn’t go into details about the country's elections, specifying, however, that the notion of administrative resource is absent in France but the French were quick to learn what it means thanks to Russia.
It was Mikhail Gorbachev, who stole the show. The sole president of the USSR, Gorbachev said the recent elections to the State Duma and of president were the biggest rollback in terms of democracy in the last decade and United Russia is the degraded copy of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union).
Gorbachev urged to immediately abandon novelties of the last years, including the 7-percnet ceiling at State Duma elections, new rules for the party registration, the ban on election blocs, exclusion of “against all” line from the ballot and pro-rata election to the State Duma. Without any optimism, the former leader called for direct elections both of governors and the Federation Council of Russia.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Apr. 28, 2008
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