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Russia Needs An Arab Spring, Kasparov Says
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» recoil replied on Thu Jul 7, 2011 @ 6:14pm |
 Coolness: 86500 | Russia needs an Arab Spring, Kasparov says
[ www.thespec.com ] Wed Jul 06 2011 STRASBOURG, FRANCE Russia’s beleaguered opposition should give up on rigged elections and emulate the Arab Spring mass protests that brought down corrupt regimes in Egypt and Tunisia earlier this year. Garry Kasparov, opposition leader and former world chess champion, was speaking in the wake of last month’s refusal by authorities to register the opposition People’s Freedom Party for a Dec. 4 parliamentary vote. “Russia has no elections, no free media and any opposition action is always met by police,” Kasparov said late Tuesday. He was dismissive of billionaire Mikhail D. Prokhorov’s Right Cause — another, more moderate opposition party, which seems to have got past the registration hurdle. “The regime (of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin) is not going to change through the ballot box. So any attempt to create an opposition within the system is doomed,” he shrugged. What is left is “the Egyptian option,” Kasparov concluded. “I am in favor of boycotting elections and mobilizing people through the social networks ... it may take longer than people want, but you have to start telling the country that the regime is illegitimate and any participation in the so-called official procedures only adds legitimacy,” he said. Other Russian opposition leaders, who on Tuesday traveled to Strasbourg alongside Kasparov for a charity concert funded by jailed energy tycoons Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, broadly agreed with the former chess champion, but were less sanguine. McClatchy-Tribune news service |
Russia Needs An Arab Spring, Kasparov Says
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