You sometimes hear of a prima donna candidate skipping out on a televised debate, like Trump did recently. However, in Russia they do "democracy" a little bit differently than anywhere else. There, late last month, none of the candidates bothered to show up and it was cancelled after just 15 seconds, with the startled host apologizing and left going to regularly scheduled programming.

Source: Moscow Times

Russian television aired what is perhaps one of the world’s shortest political debates after none of the candidates for next month’s regional elections showed up for the event.

The state broadcaster Rossia’s regional affiliate in the Siberian region of Kemerovo went ahead with the debate program on Wednesday evening despite the no-shows.

“Hello, we’re broadcasting joint campaign events for the elections to the legislative assembly of Kuzbass,” said the host Andrei Toropov.

“No one came to the studio, so regular programming will follow,” he added, wrapping up 15 seconds of the broadcast.

Okay, so where were they?

Candidates from the Communist Party and the far-right Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR), who are leading the local party tickets, were supposed to take part in the televised debate, according to the business daily Kommersant.

Communist Party secretary Nikolai Mukhin told Kommersant that their candidate, Yekaterina Gruntova, could not make it because of a previously scheduled meeting with constituents.

Gruntova’s counterpart from LDPR, Stanislav Karpov, was also tied up in campaign events with party leader Leonid Slutsky, who was visiting the region at the time of the broadcast, according to LDPR representative Kirill Pravin.

Perhaps they skipped the debate because they'd already seen the results?