US3 min(s) read
Published 11:25 09 Jun 2021 GMT
Former POTUS Barack Obama has warned that the Republican party is seriously undermining American democracy.
In an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper, the 59-year-old Democrat compared the US to Hungary, Poland, and Russia as he claimed that the US could be on its way to an "undemocratic America" after a "series of steps".
He told the host: "All of us as citizens have to recognize that the path towards an undemocratic America is not going to happen in just one bang. It happens in a series of steps."
The father-of-two said of the GOP: "We have to worry when one of our major political parties is willing to embrace a way of thinking about our democracy that would be unrecognizable and unacceptable even five years ago or a decade ago.
"And when you look at what's happened in places like Hungary and in Poland... as recently as ten years ago, [they] were functioning democracies, and now essentially have become authoritarian."
He added: "Vladimir Putin gets elected with the majority of Russian voters but none of us would claim that that's the kind of democracy that we want."
Elsewhere in the interview, Obama stressed the importance of American democracy, saying: "I didn't expect that there would be so few people who would say, 'Well, I don't mind losing my office because this is too important. America is too important. Our democracy is too important.'
"My hope is that the tides will turn. But that does require each of us to understand that this experiment in democracy is not self-executing. It doesn't happen just automatically.
"It happens because each successive generation says these values, these truths we hold self-evident, this is important. We're going to invest in it and sacrifice for it. And we'll stand up for it, even when it's not politically convenient'."
Obama's CNN interview came just before two Senate committees released a report on the deadly breach of the US Capitol on January 6, The Guardian reports.
Five people lost their lives during the siege, which many believe was incited by then-President Donald Trump following his unfounded claims of voter fraud. The 74-year-old was even impeached shortly after the attack - but was later acquitted by the Senate.
Obama had criticized his Republican counterpart the day after the insurrection, saying: "History will rightly remember today's violence at the Capitol, incited by a sitting president who has continued to baselessly lie about the outcome of a lawful election."
