Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev called on Russian citizens to vote and reject the United Russia party during Russia’s parliamentary elections as it will not be fair.
“Russian voters should exercise their right to vote, as I will, and reject the United Russia party led by Mr. Putin,” Gorbachev said during his visit to Germany.
In his interview with the Wall Street Journal, Gorbachev said that an authoritarian government was necessary to pull Russia together in 2000 when Vladimir Putin first came to power. At the time, he brushed off concerns from a French colleague that Mr. Putin would “make a habit” of such tactics.
The Secretary of United Russia’s General Council Presidium, Sergei Neverov, stood up for the party saying that Gorbachev forgot about “democratic” elections when he was in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and when all the elections ended with 99 percent of the vote for one party.
“In regard to ‘authoritarianism,’ the government of today’s Russia would like to remind Mikhail Gorbachev about his personal decisions that he took to regain order in the Baltic States and Georgia when peaceful demonstrations of the Soviet people were repressed. Was this democracy?” Neverov said.
State Duma elections are slated for December 4.