With no hope of beating Russian President Vladimir Putin in this weekend's election, liberal contender Irina Khakamada is campaigning on a "no to authoritarianism" platform - with humour, elegance and a common touch.
Slim and smartly dressed in a fur coat and black pants, Khakamada was greeted by a round of applause from students of the Urals' Perm Pedagogic Institute on a campaign swing recently.
Perm is part of the axis of Khakamada's campaign, which also includes Nizhny Novgorod on the Volga and Saint Petersburg, which she says "remain loyal to democratic values despite the authoritarian regime now apparent" in Russia.
Framed by the institute hall's wall decorations of Soviet hammer and sickle, she spoke out sharply against the presidential administration which is "on the way to restore the Soviet Communist party and its politburo."
"I come to the presidential elections not to win, but so that the voice of the free would be heard," Khakamada, who according to polls can win no more than two percent of the vote, told her audience of some 300 students.
And so, "come on, ask me questions, don't be afraid. It is Putin you should be afraid of!" she quips, prompting timid laughter.
The students took the chance to interrogate her over their college's financing, reforms in the education system and the army, the war in Chechnya and the way to breathe new life into Russia's democratic movement. Khakamada freely admitted what she called the liberals' chief "mistake," which cost them votes in a December parliamentary election and saw the two main liberal parties ousted from the lower house of parliament.
"We have forgotten how to maintain a dialogue with the people. We plunged into politics and forgot what the ordinary people want," she said.
To remedy the mistake, Khakamada has set up a free telephone line for voters to use for comments and suggestions.
During electoral debates on local television, she also harped on the ordinary people's problems, evoking doctors and teachers "who do not receive their salaries," and private employees whose wages suffer from excessive taxes on small business.
She also sent a flattering nod to Russia's sprawling but largely impoverished regions, reminding the local Perm Echo radio that "70 percent of taxes collected in the regions should stay there" instead of being channelled to the flourishing Moscow.
The common touch occasionally netted her bizarre questions, which she weathered with more humour than is generally seen on Russia's political scene.
"It is very difficult, nearly unbearable to be a woman politician. One must have nerves of steel," she complained on the Perm Echo's airwaves, denouncing what she called male "discrimination."
"They let women into politics to show that they are represented, but they are not allowed to make decisions. It is men who make them, and that is why the policy is so repressive, aggressive, unpredictable and uncompromising," she said. "Politics needs women. Women do not like fighting, they prefer negotiating," she concluded.
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