Gorbachev urges poll rerun amid protests

FORMER Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has called for Russia’s elections to be rerun due to fraud, as the opposition vowed new rallies contesting the results despite mass arrests.

Police put a huge security cordon around the square in central Moscow which saw the latest protest to prevent a new demonstration, as the opposition called for a mass gathering near the Kremlin on Saturday.

The protests and a loss of support in the parliamentary elections have provided Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin with an unexpected challenge as he prepares to contest a return to the Kremlin in 2012.

Amid growing international alarm over the claims of vote-rigging, Gorbachev said the results of Sunday’s poll should be invalidated and new elections held due to “numerous falsifications and rigging”.

“The results do not reflect the will of the people,” said Gorbachev, president when the Soviet Union collapsed two decades ago.

“Therefore I think they [Russia’s leaders] can only take one decision — annul the results of the election and hold new ones.”

Putin’s United Russia party won the polls with a reduced majority amid signs his popularity might be waning. The opposition says his party’s performance would have been even worse in free elections.

Putin has yet to make any comment about the protests, which analysts have described as the biggest opposition rallies since the early 1990s just after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The parliament polls were seen as a litmus test of Putin’s popularity as he prepares to take the Kremlin from his protege Dmitry Medvedev and embark on a new six-year mandate.

Activists say some results stretched all credibility, such as United Russia’s polling 99.5% in the Caucasus region of Chechnya and almost all the residents of a Moscow psychiatric hospital voting for the party.

Protesters vowed further rallies in the days to come, despite a police warning that participants in unsanctioned protests would be arrested.

A group “for honest elections” said on its Facebook page a demonstration would take place on Revolution Square on Saturday. More than 10,000 people have already promised to attend.

Police said 550 people were detained in Tuesday’s rally in Moscow, with another 200 held in St Petersburg. Many were released but Moscow Echo radio said six of those detained were given jail terms of up to 15 days.

State television news has virtually ignored the protests, and the news bulletins on Channel One did not contain a single mention of the protests all day.

But with the authorities clearly nervous, police said more than 51,000 police were guarding the city streets, among them 2,000 army conscripts, in a heightened security regime.