Get Your Popcorn Ready: the Televised Presidential Debates Are About to Start in Russia
There are 3 weeks before the Russian presidential elections. Next Wednesday is a new and probably the most exciting stage — the beginning of the televised debates on federal channels. Vladimir Soloviev will be the host. It starts Wednesday. Don't miss it.
Putin himself, as is already known, doesn't intend to participate in debates. This is his legal right. First, he's busy with work. And everyone understands what work and how busy he is. Secondly, Putin is already clear and understood. And there's also a well-known rule, which is third: It never makes sense for a frontrunner to enter into direct debates with an opponent, because in this he will inevitably benefit the opponent. And why do this?
According to VTSIOM polls, Putin's electoral rating is 69.5%. This is almost 4 times the total support of the other candidates. All of them have single digits, that is, less than 10%. And most of them are fighting until the end, even for less, just to pass at least 1%. This is what this looks like: Pavel Grudinin — 7.5%; Vladimir Zhirinovsky — 5.3%; Grigory Yavlinsky — 1.4%; Ksenia Sobchak — 0.9%; Sergei Baburin — 0.4%; Boris Titov — 0.3%; Maxim Suraykin — 0.1%.
What do these figures say? Grigory Yavlinsky made a leap over the past week. He moved to 4th place just ahead of Ksenia Sobchak. And her support fell below 1%. And this is with a dynamic campaign with trips both around the country and the world: from the island of Bali in Indonesia to the US. But she didn't go to Crimea.
But what's interesting is as voters get to know Sobchak better, not only is her rating falling, but her disapproval rating is rising. Here she's no longer just a champion, but a record holder. Head of the Russian Public Opinion Research Center, Valery Fyodorov, said on Monday that 90% of voters absolutely refuse to vote for Sobchak.
Previously, Zhirinovsky was the disapproval rating leader, but he reduced his opponents to "only" 30%. Also a large number, but still three times less than Sobchak. It seems she triggers some kind of defensive mechanism. Like in human relations, when, in an unsolicited romantic gesture, somebody gets a little too close, resulting in an internal warning saying, "Stay back!"
The flow of the figures means that they are alive, and there's still time until the moment of truth. There's still time to campaign, just make it in time. But there is a limitation. Voters will not forgive deception. Communist voters won't forgive Zyuganov because, at the end of his political career, he decided to burn down the party to support a complete stranger—Grudinin. The majority of Communists and their sympathizers felt that they had been cheated. Therefore, the rating of Grudinin is lower than the rating of the party itself. And if that's not a schism, what is?
As for Grudinin himself, his support is below expectations and lower than what a Communist Party candidate could have, assuming that he acts in accordance with just the 7th paragraph of the Moral Code of the Builder of Communism. "Honesty and truthfulness, moral integrity, simplicity and modesty in public and personal life." This is exactly the problem with Grudin. Not only is he still involved in foreign accounts and companies, even part of the Lenin communal farm shares is in offshore accounts, an oxymoron of some kind. Lenin has offshore accounts? He also kept his assets in the Liechtenstein bank and the Swiss UBS, both reputable brands are on the blacklist of the US Internal Revenue Service, since non-residents use these banks to avoid taxes on hidden assets. Grudinin also played hide and seek with the Russian Tax Service, and he also kept his family's property from everyone. The last things that surfaced were 2 houses and land in Latvia, owned by his son Artem, who has a residence permit in Latvia, and his wife, who has a Latvian passport. Their extra house looks like "a spare airport" for dad, in Latvia. Which is known as a European "laundromat" for cleaning dirty money.
Does such a candidate make all Russian Communists happy? Obviously not. As polls from last week show, only 47% are ready to vote for Grudinin, a minority of traditional Communist Party supporters. If Grudinin had filled out the applications when entering the civil service honestly, he certainly wouldn't have been accepted, because he has too many weak points for possible pressure from abroad and the inevitable conflict of interests.
Zyuganov responds to all this by cursing journalists and declaring an allegedly unrestrained campaign to compromise the Communist Party candidate. Well, what can I say here? Maybe simply, as Lenin would have said? No one in the world is capable of compromising Communists if they don't compromise themselves. There's nothing more to add. And it's not about the attacks, but about what's happening in the Communist Party.