When electoral shenanigans backfire - Russian edition

I had to laugh at this report from the BBC.

For the past four years, Marina Udgodskaya has scrubbed and mopped the offices of the local administration building in Povalikhino in rural Russia.

Now the 35-year-old cleaner is downing her dusters to move into the boss's seat, after winning an election earlier this month that she only entered to in order to get him reappointed.

When no-one in the village signed-up to challenge Nikolai Loktev, who's from the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, he persuaded Ms Udgodskaya to register as his "rival" to ensure the minimum requirement of two candidates.

That plan backfired when the cleaner beat him by a landslide.

. . .

... the village shopkeeper insists this result was personal: Mr Loktev had simply stopped showing any interest in his responsibilities.

"If we could have voted against all we would have done, but we had the option to vote for Marina, so we did," Irina explained.

"I think she'll cope. The whole village will help. Though of course, her education needs a bit of a boost."

Like it or not, Ms Udgodskaya is stuck with her new job. If she refused the role, the Pensioners' Party which is backing her says she'd have to pay for the entire election to be re-run.

There's more at the link.

I guess she'll go from cleaning up the administrative offices to cleaning up the administration!  I'm sure the villagers found the result amusing - although her former boss might not be so sanguine about it in private.

Hmmm... I can think of a few towns around here that could do with a major clean-up in their administrations.  Perhaps we should persuade the janitors to get politically organized?

Peter