The prime ministers in waiting

The four candidates that are challenging Vladimir Putin in tomorrow’s presidential elections include the Communist Party boss, a billionaire, a bearded populist and an ultra-nationalist.

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 Mr Zyuganov is competing for the presidential post for the fourth time.

Since he lost to Russian President Boris Yeltsin in 1996 with 40 per cent of the vote, support for him has steadily dwindled as his strongest constituency aged, coming up with 29.2 per cent in 2000 and 17.7 per cent in 2008.

An admirer of Joseph Stalin and the late Soviet empire, Mr Zyuganov’s promise to nationalise 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 humourless critiques of the current political system in his opera-singer bass.

SERGEI MIRONOV– Just Russia party

Slogan: Our course: to fairness!

Soundbite: “What sort of a system have we built, together with Mr 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 St Petersburg, Mr Mironov skyrocketed from relative obscurity to the country’s top political echelon when Mr 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, Mr Mironov has assumed a more radical stance after his dismissal last year, directing his social-democratic party against Mr 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, Mr Mironov has offered his candidacy to be a “transitional President” for two years.

VLadimir Zhirinovsky – Liberal Democratic party

Slogan: Zhirinovsky or it will get worse: you choose.

Soundbite: “The whole country hates you! If (I and Mr Zyuganov) lead our supporters out – that’s tens of millions! It won’t be an Orange revolution, it’ll be a second October!”

A 65-year-old Mr Zhirinovsky is Russia’s most frequent presidential candidate, skipping just one of the past six elections in 2004, but never obtaining more than 10 per cent.

His Liberal Democratic party a one-man show, Mr 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, Mr 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 Mr Putin’s United Russia bloc. Although he descends from a Polish Jew father (Zhirinovsky is his mother’s name), he frequently assumes a nationalistic rhetoric.

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.”

Anewcomer to Russia’s political scene, 46-year-old Mr Prokhorov has pivoted his campaign on countering the three of the opposition’s “dinosaurs” who he says are not interested in beating Mr 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.