DONETSK -- Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych may be a target for criticism throughout the country, but not in Donetsk Oblast. The native of this heavily industrialized region and its former governor, he still enjoys high popularity here in the nation's most populous oblast. He may have lost a little of this credit when many locals got stuck in traffic jams because roads were closed off for his motorcade on a recent visit.
That happened on Oct. 18,
when Yanukovych attended the 5th annual International Investment
Forum in Donetsk and then a steel mill in the town of Yenakiyeve.
Because of the president’s visit to the oblast, police took
unprecedented security measures, mobilizing forces from all over the
region to clear the places and roads where Yanukovych was to appear,
the news website Ostrov reported. Traffic in Donetsk and Yenakiyeve
was obstructed, causing long delays for drivers and passengers of
municipal transport.
Kostyantyn Lugovyy, a
29-year old blogger, witnessed one of those traffic problems near
Yenakiyeve. “On my way home I happened to feel in full how close I
was to my president,” he wrote on his blog.
Lugovyy told the Kyiv Post
he saw a bus with miners from Donetsk, Zasyadko mine also waiting for
Yanukovych to pass by. The transport queue was so far down the road
that traffic didn’t begin moving until long after the president
passed. “Such maltreatment of people seems strange, because Donetsk
Oblast is the one that… Regions’ party calls its own,” the
blogger said. “Or these politicians have a realistic view of
people’s attitude towards them.”
Stanislav
Fedorchuk, a political scientist from
Donetsk, says the reason for Yanukovych’s recent visit to
Donbas was nothing to do with investment.
“No doubt he arrived to ask how many votes for the Party of Regions
Donetsk Oblast is supposed to give,” Fedorchuk said.
A recent poll commissioned
by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation shows support for the Party
of Regions at 36 percent in eastern Ukraine. That is almost half as
much as the political force had in the 2007 parliamentary election.
Ahead of the Oct. 28 vote,
Yanukovych’s party is facing disappointment in what’s been its
hotbed of support in past years. In an attempt to attract supporters,
the party as well as its candidates in single-mandate districts, have
hit the electorate with massive advertising campaigns and coaxed them
in different ways. Bags filled with newspapers, booklets, musical CDs
and caps with the Regions’ logo are distributed in party tents, of
which there are more than all the other political forces’ combined.
Distributing food packages
with buckwheat, sugar and cheap canned fish has been a common
practice, though much appreciated by older voters. Some people are
even ready to jostle for gifts as they did for free umbrellas handed
out by the party’s activists in the city of Mariupol in September.
A video of that event went viral on the Internet last month. Donetsk
national university freshmen were pleasantly surprised with flash
cards from Tetiana Bakhteyeva, a Party of Regions’ candidate in
Donetsk.
But many voters prefer more valuable presents, such as the numerous
gifts that have been given to kindergartens, schools and hospitals.
Campaigners have grown fond of building playgrounds or further
equipping existing ones, withholding the fact that the equipment is
often paid for with state or regional budget money.
But that doesn’t matter to some voters. Anna Terestchenko, a
73-year old civil activist from the old miners’ settlement of
Kondratyevka, doesn’t feel bribed when two playgrounds were built
there, “thanks to the party candidate Ihor Shkirya.”
“There
wouldn’t be any playgrounds if there were no Shkirya,” said
Terestchenko, who doesn’t hide her intention to vote for the Party
of Regions candidate in this election. “God grant he will be
elected and he will help us much more. We are all for him!”
The idea that candidates and their parties should invest in districts
during the campaign is quite common. Serhiy Tkachenko, head of the
Donetsk Office of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, an election
watchdog, considers the use of administrative resources and bribing
of voters to be a scourge of the 2012 campaign in Donetsk Oblast.
“Voters are greedy for presents and promises,” Tkachenko said. He
believes people don’t want to know how candidates and parties fill
their campaign chests, or how they manage to fulfill election
promises.
Other parties could
open voters’ eyes to the inner workings of the Regions’ campaign
in Donbas. However, Ukrainian opposition parties are hesitant to play
on the electoral field that it still considers ‘alien.’ “This
is its own fault, because it hasn’t built a competitive structure
in the region yet. Opposition is losing densely populated Donbas
because of its attitude again,” political analyst Fedorchuk
said.
It is only Ukraine’s
Communist Party, due to consistently populist rhetoric, that has
benefited from the Regions’ decline in support. But there is little
doubt that the Communists, often loyal to Yanukovych in the current
parliament, will change their position after a new one is elected.
Kyiv Post staff
writer Denis Rafalsky can be reached at [email protected].
