Lithuania: Six months after Lithuania's president was impeached for alleged corrupt links to a Russian businessman, another Russian millionaire looks likely to triumph in tomorrow's hotly contested general election.
Twenty parties are fighting for 141 seats in the Baltic state's first such poll since joining the European Union in May, but the Labour Party, led by Mr Viktor Uspaskich (45), is set to capitalise on the disaffection of poor rural and urban voters.
Formed last year after Mr Uspaskich left the ruling coalition of Social Democrats and Social Liberals, the Labour Party is expected to repeat its success in June's elections to the European Parliament, with opinion polls gauging its support at about 38 per cent.
Such a showing would allow Mr Uspaskich - an agribusiness tycoon with a popular brand of pickled cucumbers - to push President Valdas Adamkus to name him as prime minister, ousting the incumbent Social Democrat, Mr Algirdas Brazauskas.
Mr Uspaskich has lambasted the government for "doing nothing to protect the working class", and has promised throngs of supporters at his rallies that the Labour Party would increase salaries and pensions while lowering income tax.
His populist rhetoric has resonance far beyond Lithuania's Russian minority, particularly among the provincial poor, who feel little effect from EU membership other than rising prices and an unease that their complaints will never be heard in Brussels.
The Russian-born businessman looks sure to garner votes from former supporters of Mr Rolandas Paksas, who became president in early 2003 on a similar pledge to improve the lot of the ordinary Lithuanian and root out corruption among the political elite in the capital, Vilnius.
But Mr Paksas was impeached in April amid allegations that his office had been infiltrated by Moscow's Mafia and intelligence services through his richest ally, Russian businessman Mr Yuri Borisov. Both men deny the charges.
Further corruption scandals have increased public suspicion of the ruling coalition and strengthened the appeal of Mr Uspaskich as the man to clean things up.
"People are generally disgusted with dirty domestic politics and are eager to punish those currently in power," said Audrius Baciulis, a political analyst with weekly news magazine Veidas.