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New wife not enough to spark aging Communist’s revival
Petro Symonenko (Yaroslav Debelyi)

New wife not enough to spark aging Communist’s revival

Jan 14, 2010 at 23:27 | Yuliya Popova
The leader of the dinosaur Communist Party, Petro Symonenko, 58, has been hammered and sickled down to a meager 3.4 percent of votes.

As a party leader, he’s been around since 1993 in Ukraine and ran for the presidency twice before. In his program, he promises “the power to workmen, socialism and the friendship of people” if elected. By that, he means a parliamentary republic, deputies stripped of immunity and oligarchs weaned from oil and gas reserves.

Symonenko as president would consider quitting the World Trade Organization and turn up his nose to International Monetary Fund’s bailouts because “they limit Ukraine’s sovereignty.” In foreign policy, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus would backtrack on their 1991 divorce and would live as one big family. Symonenko’s program is sharp, succinct and highly unattainable. A son of a tractor driver and a nurse, Symonenko as president appeals mainly to elderly pensioners still nostalgic for Soviet days, and people with incomplete secondary schooling, according to the polls. However, after divorcing his wife of 35 years and tying the knot with a journalist half his age, he could win over more young voters.

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