also rose through three political offices (from the deputy governor of Bayelsa State to governor, from governor to vice-president, and from vice-president to president) through unusual circumstances. In Finland, Lauri Kristian Relander was elected president as a dark horse in 1925, his party naming him as its candidate only after the people had voted for presidential electors. A dark horse presidency in Finland remained possible and sometimes speculated upon until the electoral system was changed to a direct personal vote in 1987. Several government ministers, who were appointed to the third cabinet of Russian prime minister Dimitri Medvedev on 21 May 2012, were also described as "dark horses" for lacking experience, such as Olga Golodets, Vladimir Medinsky and Alexander Novak. Some of the candidates for the presidency of Iran in 2013 were labelled as dark horse, including Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, Mohsen Rezai, Mostafa Pourmohammadi, Mohammad Saeedikia and Mohammad Gharazi. In the United Kingdom, Jeremy Corbyn, who won the 2015 Labour Party leadership election despite struggling to secure enough nominations from the Parliamentary Labour Party to stand as a candidate, has also been described as a dark horse. In Germany, government leaders were initially not party politicians (1867-1918). Dark horse candidates were not uncommon in the Weimar era (1919-1933); backbencher Franz von Papen and general Kurt von Schleicher were chancellors of this kind. Most influential became retired general and World War I leader Paul von Hindenburg, who was elected president in 1925, despite not even having run in the first round of that contest. In the Federal Republic (since 1949) dark horse candidates are rare. The most notable example might be Martin Schulz, former president of the European Parliament and mayor of a small town. His candidacy for chancellorship failed in the 2017 federal parliament elections, despite a temporary polling surge. In the 2021 German federal election it was long speculated that the Green Party led by Annalena Baerbock or the CDU/CSU led by Armin Laschet would place first in the polls and/or be able to get their candidate elected chancellor. Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party of Germany who had himself lost his party's leadership election to Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans in December 2019, the winners of that contest also being described as "Dark horses", was long not considered a viable option for the chancellorship before jumping ahead to first place in the polls and ultimately leading his