DONETSK – Hennadiy Muliavko and his wife Alla are Viktor Yanukovych voters in Yanukovych country.
They voted for him in the 2004 presidential election, for his Party of Regions in 2006 and 2007, and for the former Donetsk governor in 2010, when he finally won the presidency in his second try. In the 2010 election, this industrial city and the surrounding oblast – home to 10 percent of Ukraine’s people — gave its favorite political son more than 90 percent of the vote.
Now, however, his popularity has tumbled amid continued economic troubles, cuts in social spending and booming corruption.
“We thought President Yanukovych would support us, but everything they [the authorities] did – they put us on our knees,” said Alla Muliavko, her voiced filled with irritation and disappointment.
Hennadiy Muliavko is a 53-year-old former army soldier who also worked on the cleanup after the Chornobyl nuclear accident in 1986. He complains of deteriorating health, including paralysis in his legs and right hand, and is confined to a wheelchair.
The Muliavkos, who live in the town of Komsomolske, located 25 kilometers south of Donetsk, complain that the government cut his pension from Hr 7,200 ($900) per month to Hr 2,000 ($250), and now they are struggling to make ends meet.
They are among the hundreds of thousands in this region who have turned their backs on Yanukovych and his Party of Regions since he took office in 2010.
This city of steel and coal has traditionally been a bastion of support for the party. Donetsk’s top dog is Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man and a Regions lawmaker.
But according to polls by the Razumkov Center, support for the Party of Regions in the east of the country has dropped from 65.1 percent in April 2010 to 30.5 percent in June this year. That compares to a drop from 41.2 percent to 27.6 percent nationwide.
Hennadiy Korzhov, a sociologist at the Donetsk-based Institute for Social Studies and Political Analysis, says people in the region are demoralized due to unfulfilled promises and are uncertain who to vote for. “The fall of the rating of the Party of Regions in Donetsk region is due to people’s exaggerated expectation for social and economic development,” he said.
Protests against the government’s tax code and cuts to state handouts for Chornobyl workers and Afghanistan war veterans have been taking place sporadically since last year in Donetsk.
Volodymyr Derkach, a head of Donetsk regional organization for the All-Ukrainian Union of Chornobyl Veterans, said he was surprised to find out that the government is willing to spend additional Hr 8 billion ($1 billion) on increasing some social spending and returning lost savings in the Soviet Sberbank.
Analysts say this is a populist move ahead of parliamentary elections in October.
“But earlier they said they did not have Hr 1 billion for Chornobyl veterans,” he said.
The cut in support hurt in particular given the government’s lavish spending on projects that benefit the country’s top politicians.
“The government says they do not have the money for us, but at the same time they find money to build helipads,” said Kamil Valetov, a 44-year old paratrooper who fought for the Soviet army in Afghanistan in the 1980s. He was referring to a helipad built in Kyiv for use by the president.
“Lawmakers, the president and judges should be stripped of subsidies,” he added.
Derkach said that “this problem can be solved only in political sphere, in the parliament, by installing a new government after the elections.”
Others, however, say they are ready to give the Party of Regions another chance at the fall elections.
Analysts say that despite the currently falling popularity of the Party of Regions in the east of the country, some of the undecided voters may come back due to the lack of political alternative there.
“Support for the Party of Regions may grow [closer to the Oct. 28 election], depending on government policies and on whether people can find an alternative,” said sociologist Korzhov.
He said people in the Donbas region are looking for a political alternative, but they do not see one, as they associate the united opposition with jailed former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who remains unpopular here.
“In such a case with no other alternatives, the local electorate will be forced to vote for ‘their’ guys again,” Korzhov said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Yuriy Onyshkiv can be reached at [email protected]
