Loser show

Pre-election television debates are of interest only to outsiders of the presidential campaign

Precious minutes of television, allocated by law for free campaigning, were divided among the contenders for the presidential post. The draw for the distribution of airwaves was held yesterday by the Central Election Commission. The head of the department, Vladimir Churov, was absent from the event, so the process was led by the chairman of the commission on information disputes, a member of the Central Election Commission, Maya Grishina. In total, the state television channels ORT, RTR and TV Center allocated 42 hours of air time for candidates to praise themselves. By law, half of this time is allocated for debates, a third for self-promotion of parties participating in the elections, and the rest goes for campaign videos of candidates.

The greatest interest was caused by the timing of the airing of the debate: politicians have been complaining for more than one election cycle that television companies are showing debates about the fate of the fatherland at an extremely inconvenient time for the electorate. True, the apolitical electorate is quite happy with this - they prefer other entertainment. Compared to the parliamentary campaign, there were no significant changes in the broadcasting schedule dedicated to the presidential elections. On ORT, political battles will be shown on Tuesdays, from seven to eight in the morning local time, and only residents of the Far East will be able to watch them live. Everyone else will receive a carefully sorted entry. On RTR the debate will take place on Thursdays at 11 pm, and on TV Center from 17.45 to 18.15. Thus, the debate is airing at a time when the majority of the country's voters are either preparing to leave home or have not yet returned from work. Nevertheless, for some reason Maya Grishina stated that these time periods, according to experts in the media community, correspond to the concept of prime time.

The candidates themselves also had no complaints about the airtime allocated for television debates. LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who never misses an opportunity to show off in front of the cameras, is happy for any broadcast. The head of the Democratic Party, Andrei Bogdanov, hopes that, as he told a Vremya Novostey correspondent, his target electorate is working, and “it’s completely normal to watch the debates before work at seven in the morning.” The leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Gennady Zyuganov does not yet have time to analyze the broadcast network: he is considering whether he should completely abandon public discussions. The final decision will be made on January 31. And the favorite of the current election race, First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, has traditionally refused to debate since the parliamentary elections of 2003. However, Boris Yeltsin also refused to debate - so in this sense, the current Russian authorities are the heirs of the 90s.

“Our candidate works, travels around the regions, meets people, solves specific problems, and this is more correct in relation to voters, as opposed to when they try to reduce everything to debates,” this is how the secretary of the presidium explained Mr. Medvedev’s decision Political Council of United Russia Vyacheslav Volodin, who is a confidant of the main contender for the presidency. According to him, the nominee of the party in power will not “block himself from people with studios,” but instead “will go to the people” and rely on “personal meetings with representatives of different segments of the population.” At the same time, Mr. Volodin did not miss the opportunity to throw a stone at the “damned nineties,” saying that “the form of debate was invented in the 90s and is now discredited by those who proposed it then.” True, according to the Levada Center, 73% of voters would still like the candidate from the party in power to also take part in televised debates (the study was conducted on January 18-22, 2008 in a number of regions of the country, 1,600 respondents were interviewed, the statistical error is not exceeds 3%). And perhaps they will still see him among the participants. True, in a mystical way. There is a precedent: November polls by VTsIOM (the sample and statistical error are the same as those of the Levada Center) showed that 69% of the electorate considered the winner of the pre-election television debates, United Russia, which did not participate in them.

“Our debates are not interesting to the public, this has been the case since 1991, when Boris Yeltsin abandoned them,” Deputy General Director of the Center for Political Technologies Alexei Makarkin expressed this opinion in a conversation with a Vremya Novostei correspondent. “We also don’t have a tradition of attaching great importance to debates, like in America, where it’s a huge show that the whole country watches, and its results can influence the outcome of the vote. For a debate, you need two or three candidates with national fame and approximately equal chances of winning; you need real political competition and intrigue. And in our conditions, participation in debates is beneficial primarily to outsiders, who increase their recognition by appearing on the screen next to popular figures.”

Nevertheless, the analyst believes that debates cannot be completely abolished as a type of campaigning: “It will be difficult to bring them back later when competition in politics does appear.” Vyacheslav Volodin also agreed with this opinion. He refused the Vremya Novostey correspondent’s proposal to pass through the State Duma a law to abolish “discredited” debates, citing the fact that every politician should retain the right to choose.

Natalia ROZHKOVA