“People will start to get angry and think how much they will steal from this” – political scientist Abbas Gallyamov on election promises to make Vladivostok a millionaire

The pre-election nature of all these actions is quite obvious. The authorities are now trying to impress the imagination of the Russian voter with the bulk of their plans. The less realistic they are, the even better, because in general, the voter no longer believes in plans, strategies and projects. Over the course of 20 years, he had seen enough, heard enough, and he developed skepticism towards everything. Now the authorities are trying, as they say, to crush them by quantity. There should be a lot of plans, they should be large-scale in order to act not through reason and logic, but through emotions. It is necessary to amaze the imagination, in the hope that a certain number of people will believe in it.

In the Far East, voting is usually in protest. Now the protest is connected with the feeling that people here are forgotten by everyone, Moscow does not care. Protest voting here was strong before, remember Khabarovsk at least. And now it can take on a threatening character. And here the minister, as the person who is responsible for this story, is trying to impress the inhabitants of the Far East, so that they have bright projects in front of them. There is a general strategy – to impress the Russians, and then each official, within the framework of this general strategy, solves his tactical tasks.

The main problem of the Russian authorities is that the electorate has lost faith in the fact that some changes and some development are possible in the country. Breakthroughs were promised in 2018, but instead people see degradation. This is the main reason for the decline in ratings – the feeling that the regime has exhausted itself and is not capable of anything else.

By itself, this ad, this project may not work. Voters developed skepticism about such statements. There should be a specification so that each person can see what he personally will receive from this – an investment in infrastructure, an increase in the number of jobs, something else. So far we have seen only a rough sketch, and then all this should be filled with meanings, specifics.

The promise to make Vladivostok a million-plus city will not help greatly increase the percentage of votes for United Russia. It’s like the turns of Siberian rivers in the 80s. At some stage, people stop believing so much that all plans just start to annoy. People will start to get angry and think how much they will steal from this. In fact, they will steal everything, and instead of the promised, they will build nonsense, and life will only get worse. Now the distrust of the system has reached such a level that it can provoke a backlash negative reaction.