MOSCOW – The last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Monday accused Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin of arrogance over their plan to jointly decide who should run in next year’s presidential elections. President Medvedev and his predecessor and current prime minister Putin have repeatedly said they will sit down and privately decide which of them should run in elections scheduled for March 2012.
The decision could effectively decide the fate of the presidency in a country where the ruling Kremlin party dominates all facets of politics and has unrestricted access to the media. But Gorbachev — who turns 80 on March 2 and has been using the added media attention to criticise the country’s political course — said such a decision would contradict all democratic norms.
“It is immodest to say that we will sit down with Dmitry Anatolyevich (Medvedev) and decide,” Gorbachev said of Putin. “I do not like how they are acting. This is not Putin’s — this is the nation’s business. This is the decision of those who vote,” Gorbachev told reporters. “We all have to be a little more modest,” he said. “Their confidence has grown into overconfidence.”
The current and former Russian presidents have not said when they intend to decide which of them should run in 2012.
