| The mayor will not participate in televised debates The main contender for the post of Moscow mayor in the upcoming elections, Yuri Luzhkov, decided to save money from his election fund and refused to place paid advertising in the media. The incumbent mayor seems so confident of victory that he has refused both free print media coverage and televised debates with his rivals.
At yesterday's meeting, the Moscow City Election Commission held a draw for the distribution of free air time and print space among mayoral candidates. Not counting election videos, each candidate will be given 15 minutes of airtime on the TV-Stolitsa channel. The Voice of Moscow radio station will also provide candidates with a total of 25 minutes. In addition, all candidates will be able to place their election materials in 14 city newspapers, not counting district and regional publications.
However, a representative of the mayor who was present at the meeting did not participate in the distribution of free space, and at the same time said that Mr. Luzhkov did not intend to speak in public debates. This example, by the way, was followed by another candidate - the general director of Progress Association Nikolai Lifanov, who refused to discuss with his opponents live. As a result, of the four remaining candidates for the position of mayor as of yesterday, only two decided to debate: the head of the National Reserve bank Alexander Lebedev and co-owner of the coffin office German Sterligov, who is also the deputy general director of the “Thou Shalt Not Kill” charitable foundation for motherhood.
Yuri Luzhkov’s decision is, in principle, understandable: given the ratings of the current mayor, his team may not waste much effort on preparing television broadcasts and other advertising. The mayor’s refusal to pay advertising may also be due to purely pragmatic considerations. As it turned out from the income information submitted to the election commission, Mr. Luzhkov is one of the poorest candidates. If banker Lebedev earned almost 145 million rubles last year, he still has almost 50 million rubles. in a bank account and shares in 12 companies, is the owner of a plot of land in the Moscow region, an apartment in Moscow and a Range Rover car, then the mayor of Moscow does not even have living space in the capital. Yuri Luzhkov's income last year amounted to only 9 million rubles. This, as it turns out, is not enough not only for an apartment in the capital, but also for a dacha in the Moscow region - Mr. Luzhkov’s country property is located right in the Kaluga region. But the mayor also has a jeep: a GAZ-69E with a trailer. Only German Sterligov is poorer than the mayor. Income from his 50 percent stake in Alisa-Inter LLC last year amounted to only about one and a half thousand rubles. Alexander GUDKOV |
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