You're reading: Election 2012 blog: Native son faces deep pockets in District 218

Where: Sviatoshyn district of Kyiv

Polling stations: 75

Number of voters: 150,294

Number of candidates: 18

Remarks: Home base of Batkivshchyna’s Volodymyr Ariev

Born and raised in the capital’s Sviatoshyn
district, lawmaker Volodymyr Ariev from Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna Party
is facing candidates with deep pockets and successful political campaign track
records.

The former journalist is the acknowledged
favorite, even though he’s running against two millionaires.

Ariev, nonetheless, has legitimate challengers
in developer and Kyiv City Council member Lev Partskhaladze and lawmaker
Oleksandr Tretyakov.

There are other contenders running, like
Poltava Oblast’s former governor Valery Asadchev and Party of Regions member
Oleh Kalashnikov, who became famous for staging rallies outside the Pechersk
District Court in opposition to Tymoshenko. He recorded long tirades agains
her, accusing the former prime minister of being a traitor who sold out the
country during her abuse-of-office trial. Neither Asadchev nor Kalashnikov
appear to be making much headway in Sviatoshyn, according to polls.

Ariev’s aide, Serhiy Skorobahatko, told the
Kyiv Post that the candidate is using his home field advantage the old
fashioned way – through door-to-door, courtyard-to-courtyard campaigning. And
he’s doing this on a daily basis for hours at a time. Ariev and his team
distribute fold-out chairs to residents, sit and just talk to voters.

“His parents worked in the neighborhood,
his father at a chemical factory, his mother taught at a school, he grew up
here, he knows a lot of people,” Skorobahatko said.

His rivals downplayed the native son
benefits of Ariev’s campaign. Partskhaladze said he also lived in the area
since he moved at the age of 15 to Kyiv from Georgia. The voter district also
includes small parts of Podil, Obolon and the wooded Pushcha Vodytsia area of
the capital.

“Big deal, I went to school in the area, I
could also be considered a native son,” said Partskhaladze, a self-made
millionaire. Partskhaladze told the Kyiv Post his poll numbers have him
neck-in-neck with Ariev.

“As a city councilman, I’m in a better
position to talk to people about what’s happening in Kyiv.” 



Millionaire property developer Lev Partskhaladze.

Partskhaladze’s main liability is the fact
that he jumped ship to the pro-presidential faction from Vitali Klitschko’s
UDAR (Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform) Party after he got elected into
the Kyiv City Council.

“Plus builders aren’t popular people in
Kyiv, just look at how developers have scarred the city,” said Tretiakov. Once
a powerful backer of ex-President Viktor Yushchenko, Tretiakov is a skillful
campaigner. He also de-emphasized Ariev’s local roots.

“Look, I’m also from Kyiv. Nobody divides
it into neighborhoods,” Tretiakov told the Kyiv Post. “I visited the school
that Ariev attended, and you know what, they ended up supporting me…plus people
are disappointed with the current lot of politicians – there are some 40
percent undecided in this district.”

Tretiakov said his polls show he’s in close
second place but that his main competitor is Partskhaladze who he says is the
pro-presidential candidate. He said his rating has been rising the fastest in
the constituency. 



Millionaire lawmaker Oleksandr Tretiakov.

Still Ariev’s campaign poll numbers paint a
different picture. Ariev so far leads with 16 percent, Partskhaladze comes in
distant second with 8 percent, while Tretiakov has only one percent.

“We’re more concerned with how the election
commissions will behave in the constituency, they’re stacked with people from
dummy parties,” said Skorobahatko.

And should Ariev get re-elected, he plans
to cement the district with local representation in the city council.  The city’s legislature will have new
councilmen voted in 2014, and Sviatoshyn gets allotted several from its
district. 

Kyiv
Post staff writer Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected]