These authoritarian populist tactics, after those people who voted for them (or will be able to vote) will say like “and you said that this person is bad!”

They use the same tactic in Russia regularly. When politicians destroyed life of millions of people, after some time one poitician in Duma will say the right thing or propose a law for popular social issue, like “we’re against domestic violence” (domestic violence is common in this shithole), or on “elections” they will offer sausage or money for a vote to population.

I don’t know what they are trying to achieve by that, but maybe that people will restore trust in them, and will continue to believe that “BS-democracy”. And after that these politicians who support dictatorship will continue to launder resources from the country. But in Russia they do that because they need people to participate in pseudo-elections, that will legitimize their fascist regime.