Russian Experts See Billionaire Prokhorov Losing Interest In Politics

(RIA Novosti – July 11, 2013) The Civil Platform party has a good potential in the struggle for power but its leader billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov is behaving inconsistently and losing interest in politics, Russian RIA Novosti news agency reported on 11 July, quoting political analysts.

Prokhorov said earlier that the party would not nominate candidates for the Moscow mayoral and Moscow Region gubernatorial elections.

In addition, the Civil Platform has suffered setbacks recently: the party’s candidate in local elections Yaroslavl mayor Yevgeniy Urlashov has been detained on suspicion of corruption, and the party’s candidate in the Trans-Baykal Territory gubernatorial election Aleksey Koshevlev has been refused registration.

Director-general of the Centre for Political Information Aleksey Mukhin believes that Prokhorov is losing interest in political and party activities.

“His sister Irina Prokhorova is gradually becoming the party’s new face. This is bad news for the Civil Platform because it was made to fit Prokhorov’s personality and is counting on his money. Whereas all will be ok with money, I think, although I am not sure, there can be problems with political representation,” the analyst said.

Political scientist Pavel Svyatenkov believes that “everything depends on Prokhorov himself”.

“Prokhorov has the electoral potential of course; that is, there are people who are willing to vote for him… He is a billionaire and one of the leading oligarchs and looks respectable, which is important, because in our opposition there are not enough heavyweights, because in the opposition there are many people who either do not have any experience of state governing, or, even if they do, they are not taken seriously by the public,” Svyatenkov said.

The political scientist said that Prokhorov had his own electorate, but the party leader was “behaving extremely inconsistently and hesitantly”.

“I think that in theory the Civil Platform, as Mikhail Prokhorov’s party, has a good potential, but it is very easy to lose this potential because of Prokhorov’s inconsistent actions,” the expert said.

Director-general of the Institute of Regional Problems Dmitriy Zhuravlev agrees. The expert believes that the Civil Platform can attract voters, but the party is ignoring the opportunity by refusing to stand in elections.

“It is still unclear how they are going to use electoral possibilities because so far they have rejected of forms of using them. And this is a potential problem for them, because sooner or later their voters will get bored of this,” Zhuravlev said.