Reviled by the vast majority of Russians, wealthy Russian oligarchs have decided to step forward to stand for election, though few predict them good results.
"I do not know what is to be of right, left or center. All slogans uttered, but do not offer anything constructive to change," said billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, owner of Club New Jersey Nets of the NBA.
Prokhorov last week became the first oligarch who decides to jump into politics since 2003, the year he was arrested the tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who paid dearly for their decision to fund opposition to the Kremlin.
The Russian businessman intends to lead the game Just Cause (CJ), which was created by the Kremlin in 2008 from the ashes of the conservative Union of Right Forces, representing the great capital, to rally the votes of the urban middle class.
Image. The oligarchs are very unpopular with the Russians, who relate their wealth with the fraudulent privatizations possoviéticas the end of the last century many Russians condemned to abject poverty.
During the recent financial crisis, tycoons Roman Abramovich and Oleg Deripaska or lost much of their wealth accumulated in many cases thanks to stock market speculation, but that was not the case Prokhorov.
Moreover, a group of Russian citizens has proposed the imprisoned since 2005 Khodorkovsky, once the richest man in Russia, as the sole candidate of the opposition to the Kremlin in the presidential elections of 2012, which started collecting signatures on a website (www.khodorkovsky-president.ru).
"The figure of Khodorkovsky could unify not only liberals, but a significant part of the opposition, which must submit an application symbol of resistance that is relentless power," write the authors of the initiative.
