Billionaire’s lofty political ambition may just succeed

Billionaire businessman Mikhail Prokhorov is not satisfied with being one of Russia’s richest people and its most eligible bachelor. He also wants to be its prime minister and has even hinted he may run for president.

The playboy industrialist has almost no experience in politics and the small Right Cause party he took over in June is polling at only 3 per cent support, three months before an election.

But that is no obstacle to a man who started out selling jeans and, at the age of 46, has made a fortune in nickel, owns the New Jersey Nets basketball team and, many analysts say, has the tacit approval of prime minister Vladimir Putin.

Prokhorov, ranked by Forbes magazine this year as Russia’s third richest man, with an estimated fortune of £11 billion, makes no secret of his ambitions. “I think I could handle the prime minister’s job,” he declared last month at a press conference. He said almost nothing about his plans, declining even to say whether he wanted his party to be to the left, to the right, or centrist.

His one policy proposal, that Russia should abandon the rouble in favour of the euro, was widely ridiculed. But since then, Prokhorov has produced an election manifesto, made dozens of public appearances and shown he is determined to prove more than just one of the few unpredictable factors in the 4 December Duma election.

His fast start in politics seems to have swelled his ambitions, and he hinted last Friday that a strong showing in the elections may prompt him to run for the presidency itself. “If the party will be second in elections, then we will put forward our own candidate for the presidency. I do not exclude my own candidacy,” a statement on his Facebook page read.

Other parties are hardly out of the starting blocks in the campaign, but he already has posters across Moscow showing his face and the slogan: “Strength lies in power. The one who is right is stronger.”

Putin’s United Russia party dominates the Duma and is sure to be the strongest party in the next parliament, setting the stage for Putin to return to the Kremlin if he decides to run in a presidential election in March.

But opinion polls show United Russia’s popularity has slipped and Putin is looking for new faces, such as Prokhorov, partly to prove his reformist credentials.

One theory is that if Putin returns to the presidency, he may need a new prime minister to carry out the painful social and economic reforms the country needs. Prokhorov could be just that man.