Putin's Rivals: The Usual Suspects and a Wild Card
The four candidates that are challenging Vladimir Putin in the March 4 presidential elections include the Communist Party boss, a billionaire, a bearded populist and an ultra-nationalist.
As Russia edges toward Sunday's polls that will determine its leader for the next six years, the swelling protest movement has not rallied around a single candidate to oppose Putin's re-installment in the Kremlin.
Three of the four men are recurring presidential hopefuls who have failed before to win the Kremlin. The fourth is one of Russia's richest men, but even his candidacy is seen by some as a Kremlin stitch-up.
According to pollsters' predications, none will garner enough votes to force the Russian strongman into a run-off.
GENNADY ZYUGANOV, COMMUNIST PARTY
SLOGAN: "Power and property to the people!
SOUNDBITE: "Crooks, thieves and oligarchs robbed the most hardworking and brave generation of a chance to grow old in decency. We will return the Motherland stolen from us!"
-- A permanent leader of Russia's Communist party since 1995, 67-year-old Zyuganov is competing for the presidential post for the fourth time.
Since he lost to Russian president Boris Yeltsin in 1996 with 40% of the vote, support for him has steadily dwindled as his strongest constituency aged, coming up with 29.2% in 2000 and 17.7% in 2008.
An admirer of Joseph Stalin and the late Soviet empire, Zyuganov's promise to nationalize key energy assets finds a ready audience among his key supporters, whose quality of life fell with the fall of the Soviet Union and stayed inferior.
He often delivers biting humorless critiques of the current political system in his opera-singer bass, but critics accuse him of being too cautious and reliant on Communist symbols rejected by the younger population.
SERGEI MIRONOV, A JUST RUSSIA PARTY
SLOGAN: "Our course: to fairness!"
SOUNDBITE: "What sort of a system have we built, together with Putin, that everything depends on just one person? It should not be that way in a normal, democratic, social state."
-- A 59-year-old native of Saint Petersburg, Mironov skyrocketed from relative obscurity to the country's top political echelon when Vladimir Putin appointed him to chair Russia's Federation Council in 2001.
Transforming the top legislative assembly into a rubber-stamping tool while in Russia's third most important post earned him the reputation of a Putin loyalist.
However Mironov has assumed a more radical stance after his dismissal last year, directing his social-democratic party against Putin's regime and speaking at opposition rallies.
A slouched soft-spoken politician who stands in front of an icebreaker called 'Russia' in campaign clips, Mironov has offered his candidacy to be a "transitional president" for two years, during which new parliamentary elections would be held.
VLADIMIR ZHIRINOVSKY, LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY
SLOGAN: "Zhirinovsky or it will get worse: you choose."
SOUNDBITE: "The whole country hates you! If (I and Zyuganov) lead our supporters out - that's tens of millions! It won't be an 'Orange' revolution, it'll be a second October!"
-- 65-year-old Zhirinovsky is Russia's most frequent presidential candidate, skipping just one of the past six elections in 2004, but never obtaining more than ten percent.
His Liberal Democratic party a one-man show, Zhirinovsky's outrageous antics in the Russian Duma have earned him a circle of followers made up of mostly young men with a distaste for authority.
A man of contradictions, Zhirinovsky is a well-educated linguist and polyglot who likes to lambast the regime with boorish words and towering body language. His party usually votes the same way as Putin's United Russia bloc.
Although he was born Edelstein and descends from a Polish Jew father (Zhirinovsky is his mother's name), he frequently assumes a nationalistic rhetoric. Critics accuse him of lacking his own principles and adapting to political circumstances of any given moment.
MIKHAIL PROKHOROV, INDEPENDENT
SLOGAN: "Prokhorov: New President - New Russia!"
SOUNDBITE: "Russia's two biggest problems are: corruption of bureaucrats, and civic passivity of a vast number of people. These two problems are closely related."
-- A newcomer to Russia's political scene, 46-year-old Prokhorov has pivoted his campaign on countering the three of the opposition's "dinosaurs" who he says are not interested in beating Vladimir Putin.
The towering tycoon worth $12 billion, who juggles ownership of Russia's largest gold miner and the New Jersey Nets team, has Russia guessing as to why he has descended to the nitty-gritty of a presidential race.
With several high-profile celebrities and smart campaign clips speaking in his support, Prokhorov addresses Russia's Western-leaning middle-class in a way that lacks the charisma polished by decades of public speaking.
After a falling-out with the Kremlin removed Prokhorov from the helm of a right-leaning party Right Cause, he is using his presidential campaign to build another pro-business party. So far, 30,000 have signed up.
Source: Agence France Presse
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