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Candidates for the Russian presidency are scheduled to hold their first TV debate on Monday – without incumbent Vladimir Putin – ahead of the March 18 election.
Putin is expected to win a fourth term in the coming election by a comfortable margin – a recent poll conducted by the Russian state put him on a commanding 69.5 percent.
The president has opted to sit out debate season, but the views of the seven other candidates could nevertheless influence his proposals for the next six years. That thinking is expected to be revealed in a long-delayed state of the nation address, now scheduled for March 1.
What's on Putin’s agenda?
Putin’s election platform is expected to be set out later this week, with speculation that it will include promises to increase spending on health, education and infrastructure.
Extra funding for schools and hospitals is expected to come from policy changes elsewhere rather than borrowing. An income tax increase, or switch from the current 13 percent flat rate, as well as a rise in the retirement age and cuts in benefits, are on the agenda, according to Bloomberg.
People ride a tram past a board advertising the campaign of Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg, February 19, 2018.
Economic growth returned to Russia in 2017 after two years of decline, boosted by higher consumer spending and an uptick in price of oil. Official figures suggest declines in the incomes of Russians ended in 2017, but US and EU sanctions remain in place.
Bloomberg reports that Putin is being advised to raise Russia’s debt-to-GDP ratio from 12.5 percent to 16 percent, borrowing to invest around 265 billion US dollars in infrastructure upgrades.
Such an investment could also boost real incomes, with stagnant living standards a talking point among other candidates on the campaign trail.
Who else is standing?
Seven presidential candidates are expected to debate over the next three weeks, including Ksenia Sobchak, who has pitched herself as a candidate capable of influencing Putin – and possibly succeeding him in 2024.
Although the TV host barely registers in the polls, she has attracted a high-level of media exposure and hopes to use her personal ties with the president to impact his thinking. Putin served as her father's deputy when he was mayor of St. Petersburg in the 1990s, a period in which Sobchak is reported to have played with the president’s children.
Candidate in the upcoming Russian presidential election Ksenia Sobchak speaks during a news conference in Moscow, February 20, 2018.
Sobchak is seen by some commentators as lining herself up as a credible successor to the president in 2024. At that point, Putin will have served the second of the two consecutive terms allowed by the Russian constitution.
“The only way we can try to solve the situation is to go and influence the politics from inside, [by] creating our own power, which will not be marginalized . . . which you can’t just ignore, like they do with other opposition,” the Financial Times quoted Sobchak as saying.
There has been comparatively strong support for Pavel Grudinin, the millionaire Communist Party candidate who is not a party member. He has attracted polling numbers approaching 10 percent, calling for the requirements of the constitution to be honored – and hitting out at inequality and corruption.
Russian presidential candidate Pavel Grudinin, February 23, 2018.
Ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky is the only other candidate to reach above two percent, but Boris Titov also claims he can influence the agenda despite little public support.
“If we didn’t participate, the country would think that there is only support for Putin and nothing else,” pro-business Titov told the Financial Times. “Through me, you can see there is business which is not satisfied with the economic policy that is being conducted in the country today.”
What about Navalny?
Alexei Navalny, the high profile opposition leader who has been banned from contesting the March election after being given a suspended jail sentence, is attempting to influence turnout – the level of which is more uncertain than the final result.
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny (L) and his wife Yulia Navalnaya (R) in Moscow, Russia, February 25, 2018.
Navalny has called for a boycott of the election, and his supporters are campaigning for Russians to stay home on March 18 in an effort to delegitimize the result.
Turnout was 65.25 percent in 2012, and Russian media have reported that Putin is targeting a 70/70 strategy: winning 70 percent of the vote on a 70 percent turnout. Navalny’s campaign aims to keep turnout below 50 percent, an aide told Reuters.
(REUTERS&CGTN)
