Another year another election

Yesterday was the 1st round of the presidential election in Ukraine.
No surprises, the two candidates to emerge for the vote were Yanukovich (widely seen as pro-russian and less democratic) and Tymoshenko (populist and pro-west)

What was a surprise was the election itself - maybe it was the crisis - maybe the candidates had other tricks up their sleeves - but their wasn't the flurry of tents and gimmicks that normally abound. However, I did learn, that the majority of excess canidates who were running without a hope - were actually being sponsored by one of the main candidates - The idea being to steal votes from the other candidate and then collect them again in the 2nd round? Anyway - in order to get your name on the list of candidates you need millions of grivnen - so maybe there wasn't the overload of campaign posters and flags - but there was still a lot of money being wasted.
One guy - reportedly sponsored by Yanukovich - officially changed his name to "Protiv Vse" - Or our equivalent of none of the above - clever write in strategy if I do say so myself.