Ural intrigue

On April 17, the head of Yekaterinburg, Evgeny Roizman, announced his participation in the election of the governor of the Sverdlovsk region, which caused a real information storm

Roizman did not say anything sensational: he promised to participate in the elections of the head of the region for a long time, however, on one condition - if the rival is the current Sverdlovsk governor Evgeny Kuyvashev. Kuyvashev resigned, was appointed acting president. governor, after which he directly stated that he would run.

All these provincial passions would be of no interest to anyone if not for one funny circumstance: Roizman is somehow known far beyond the city he leads, while Kuyvashev cannot boast, to put it mildly, of fame even in his own region. These are the realities of modern regional politics: after the heavyweights of the 1990s were taken out of the game, a leapfrog of incomprehensible appointments and strange careers began, and now the post of governor is a rather low bureaucratic chair, which is most often occupied by no one knows who and it is not clear why occasion.

Roizman is a really famous and popular person. He is the founder of the City Without Drugs Foundation, was a member of the State Duma, and in 2013, in the wake of the then experiments of the authorities with the admission of oppositionists to participate in local elections, he was able to win the race for the chair of the head of Yekaterinburg. Since then, Roizman has become for many a symbol of the very opportunity not only to participate in elections, but also to win.

It would seem that there is every reason to believe that the gubernatorial elections in the Urals will be interesting and unpredictable, but everything is not so simple.

Firstly, the post of head of Yekaterinburg, after the charter of the city was rewritten, is purely representative. De jure and de facto, the head of Yekaterinburg, elected by the townspeople, is now just the speaker of the city duma (in which, of course, United Russia has the majority), and he has little more authority than an ordinary municipal deputy. The post of governor is an economic one, and it is hard to imagine that it will be allowed to be filled by a person who, for all his political moderation, is still too unsystematic by the standards of today's sterile politics.

Secondly, the decision to participate in the struggle for the post of governor of the Sverdlovsk region does not mean that Roizman will be allowed to participate in it at all. It is no secret that the main manipulations in Russian elections take place precisely at the stage of access to them. Parliamentary parties will not nominate Roizman, because none of them will dare to create even a symbolic problem for a candidate approved in the Kremlin, and it is almost impossible to overcome the notorious municipal filter against the wishes of the regional authorities.

However, the intrigue still remains - what if?