Originally posted by the Voice of America.
Voice of America content is produced by the Voice of America,
a United States federal government-sponsored entity, and is in
the public domain.


    February 21, 2012

Billionaire Candidate Courts Russian Voters

   James Brooke | Moscow
   Russian billionaire and presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov meets
   with young voters in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, Jan. 27, 2012.
   Photo: AP
   Russian billionaire and presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov meets
   with young voters in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, Jan. 27, 2012.

   Five men are running for president in Russia's March 4 elections, Prime
   Minister Vladimir Putin and three other candidates who first ran in
   prior decades. Then there is Mikhail Prokhorov, who launched his
   candidacy only two months ago.
   Standing just more than two meters-tall, Prokhorov, Russia's third
   richest man, feels most at home on a basketball court.
   A lifelong player who now owns the New Jersey Nets, a professional
   American NBA team, he's spending an afternoon coaching Moscow middle
   schoolers. Facing a battery of TV cameras, the candidate says sports
   and culture unites Russia, not rockets, tanks and the secret police.
   Inna Pavars, an actress and mother of a boy at the school, says she's
   impressed by the candidate and his program, explaining that she likes
   the fact he is young, modern, and supports better funding for schools
   and cultural institutions.
   With calls to cut corruption, cut government workers, end the military
   draft and allow Americans and Europeans to visit without visas, the 46
   year old is a fresh face in a field that includes two other opposition
   candidates who first ran for president in the 1990s.
   Urban appeal

   While public-opinion surveys indicate Prime Minister Vladimir Putin
   will win next month's election, most likely in the first round, they
   also indicate that Prokhorov, after only two months of campaigning,
   will place second in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia's two most
   important cities.
   Around the corner from the Moscow school, NV Art Gallery manager Maria
   Rappaport says that although many Moscow residents see Prokhorov as a
   viable alternative to Vladimir Putin, his appeal ends at the city
   limits.
   "I think that many people will be voting for him, at least in the
   capital," she says. "And I do not see how Prokhorov can convince people
   in the villages, for the fact that he is an oligarch," she says,
   explaining that many voters resent a man who became wealthy by buying
   state companies after the collapse of communism.
   "People do not trust oligarchs in this country," she says.
   Rappaport's colleague Anna Ramzhan, who plans to vote for Prokhorov, is
   cautiously supportive.
   "Lots of people tell that he is just a creation of Putin," says
   Ramzhan.
   A convenient opponent?

   On the campaign trail, candidate Prokhorov avoids direct criticism of
   Putin. Asked about growing anti-Americanism in the Putin campaign, he
   says Russia is a strong country that will solve its own problems
   without any outside interference.
   "He is a convenient contender, a convenient competitor for Putin," says
   Masha Lipman of the Carnegie Moscow Center, noting that Prokhorov
   announced his candidacy two days after anti-Putin protests broke out in
   Moscow.
   She says that no Russian billionaire is independent of the Kremlin, and
   that Prokhorov's billionaire status also limits his popular appeal.
   'In Russia, there is no infatuation with the fat cats [wealthy and
   powerful people], to say the least. People resent the fact that he is a
   billionaire," she says. "In Russia, there is a sense that if you gained
   so much money you did that at the expense of the people. They are ill
   gotten gains."
   For many voters, Prokhorov's basketball skills will not distract from a
   fortune valued at $18 billion. But a strong second-place showing could
   force Russia's next President to adopt some of the entrepreneur's
   free-market agenda.

.