More lawmakers are leaving the Party of Regions, the political faction of ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Former Party of Regions Deputy Sergiy Tigipko has inspired the recent exodus: many Party of Regions deputies are leaving the party to support Tigipko’s candidacy in the May 25 presidential elections.
On April 7, Tigipko,
the former deputy head of the Party of Regions who will run as an unaffiliated
candidate in the elections, announced the names of 17 lawmakers who have quit
the Party to join his “opposition group.”
Since Yanukovych’s
flight from Ukraine on Feb.22, more than 50 lawmakers have left the Party in an
attempt to save their reputations and dissociate from the ousted president’s criminal rap sheet.
“Now the Party of
Regions has neither strategy, tactics, nor a clear position regarding the
situation in the country, the actions of the current government and foreign
policy of Ukraine,” said Tigipko in the April 7 statement. The Party of Regions remains a closed joint stock company whose purpose
is to generate profit for certain financial and industrial groups.”
The party is experiencing unprecedented low popularity in nation-wide
polls. Only 5
percent of respondents said they would
vote for Tigipko, and 3 percent for Mykhailo Dobkin, a Party of Regions
candidate from Kharkiv, according to the latest research from GfK Ukraine,
a market research company.
According to GfK
Ukraine, 42 percent of respondents in the south and east of
Ukraine haven’t decided yet for whom they will vote, suggesting that Ukrainians have little faith in the candidates for president.
“There are
no people to vote for, no people who would stand for our interests,” separatists told oligarch Renat
Akhmetov during pro-Russian riots in Donetsk on April 7.
