Ukraine's local elections on Oct. 25 saw a whole range of new parties gain seats across the country. Yet, behind the new facade, there were plenty of old faces.
The 94
percent of election results available on Nov. 9 show that three new political
parties — Our Land (Nash Kray), Revival (Vidrodzhennia) and UKROP (Dill) —
made it into top 10 country-wide in
popularity.
Our Land
already received more than 4,100 seats in the regional and local councils,
becoming the third among party lists after the Bloc of President Petro
Poroshenko and ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna Party. UKROP
took seventh place among the parties with more than 1,800 seats in councils,
following by Revival with more than 1,500 seats.
The experts
say that Our Land and Revival have been largely formed to shelter the escapees
from ousted President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, while UKROP is a
political project of billionaire oligarch and former Dnipropetrovsk governor
Ihor Kolomoisky.
Now these
parties have a local base from which to convert their electoral — and possible
future governing — success into seats in the national parliament.
Party of Regions
refugees find new homes
Pro-government
lawmaker Andriy Levus counted that Revival incorporated 57 former Yanukovych
supporters and Our Land took in 102.
Revival won
local elections in Kharkiv and Our Land in Chernihiv. Both parties also did
surprisingly well in Ivano-Frankivsk, Kherson, Uzhgorod and Mukacheve.
The experts
believe the abundance of influential politicians of Yanukovych’s regime helped
these new parties to mobilize their electorate.
“People
associate these new political forces with old famous faces they knew from the
Yanukovych era,” said political expert Taras Berezovets.
Our Land
also had many former and incumbent mayors in its list. The party’s sudden rise
and expensive campaign has led some analysts, including
political expert Vadim Karasev, to believe that the party is a “Presidential
Administration initiative” designed to ensure that Poroshenko has a mandate in
the regions where his party was unlikely to win votes.
Oleksandr
Chernenko, a lawmaker from the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko, flatly denied that Our
Land was connected to the administration. Our Land was unavailable for
comment at the time of publication.
Revival, on the
other hand, may have several financial backers.
During Revival’s campaign
in Dnipropetrovsk, many pointed to Kolomoisky, since his former deputy,
Sviatoslav Oliynyk, leads the party. Notably Oliynyk has put his full weight
behind the UKROP party, which is openly funded by Kolomoisky, in the second
round of the mayoral elections.
“Revival is the
political partner of UKROP, they are being financed from the same pocket,”
political experts Andriy Zolotarov told news website Dnepr.Glavnoye. Volodymyr
Fesenko, head of Penta political think tank, said Revival was co-sponsored by
Kolomoisky.
In Kharkiv,
however, Revival’s candidate, popular incumbent mayor Gennady Kernes, won the
mayoral race in the first round with 65.8 percent of the votes. Kernes financed
his campaign using largely the city resources which he oversees.
The new
patriotic opposition
The success
of UKROP party has absolutely different grounds.
A creation
of billionaire Kolomoisky and infamous Dnipropetrovsk businessman Gennady
Korban, the party positioned itself as a “patriotic force.” Party’s
full name literally means “Ukrainian Union of Patriots.” UKROP (or
dill) is also the way Russian-backed separatists derogatorily call the
Ukrainian soldiers.
Kolomoisky
and Korban were credited with preventing the separatist advancement in the
summer of 2014 by financing volunteer battalions and various PR campaigns. Now
the prosecutors accuse Korban of running an organized crime group.
Another
factor which contributed to UKROP’s success is financial – the party had one of
the most expensive campaigns with a massive number of billboards advertising
the party.
Their
candidate for Dnipropterovsk mayor Boris Filatov, has gone through the second
round with 35.7 percent of votes. UKROP also became the second party by number
of seats (25) in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Council. It also became No1 in Volyn
Oblast Council, gaining 17 seats there.
Local elites and
their parties
The local elites
are responsible for dozens of the new parties created this year.
This way they tried
to create the illusion for the electorate that the new people and new ideas
stand behind them, Fesenko of Penta said. The local elites also wanted to show
the government that “they are neither for nor against Kyiv and can
continue on as they always did,” he added.
One more reason —
the local elites do not want to pay the unofficial fees to get on the lists of
the bigger parties. Similarly, parties like Bloc Petro Poroshenko might not
want these local elites for fear they could tarnish their reputations,
especially if they are too close to Kyiv, Fesenko said.
A good example of a
new regional party is New Faces (or Novi Oblychchia), which is founded by
Volodymyr Karlyuk, incumbent mayor of Irpin, a town in Kyiv Oblast. Karylyuk’s
family and friends own several foresting companies in the Kyiv Oblast and
previously ran for the Yanukovych’s Party of Regions.
Another
locally created newcomer is People’s Control, the party that took 5 seats in
Ternopil Oblast Council. The party’s leader, Dmytro Dobrodomov, is lawmaker
with Petro Poroshenko Bloc and former CEO of Lviv-based ZIK TV channel. Chesno,
the watchdog for Ukrainian politicians, accused People’s Control of being a
proxy party controlled and funded by Svoboda nationalist party. Dobrodomov
denied the accusation.
The Odesa-based
party Trust in Business (Doviriay Dilam) is headed by Odesa’s notorious
incumbent mayor Gennady Trukhanov. Trukhanov won the mayoral elections in the
first round.
The biggest loser
Not all the
newcomers did well.
The biggest loser
is the Movement for Reforms (Rukh za Reformy) and its leader Serhiy Dumchev.
Head of the supervisory council of the Kyiv-based Premium Bank, Dumchev ran for
mayor of Kyiv and filled the streets of the capital with promotional billboards
several months ahead of elections.
Hi party was
sponsored mostly by the former Yanukovych’s allies including former Vice Prime
Minister Sergiy Arbuzov, who were planning this way to gain seat in the Kyiv
City Council, the Kyiv Post source, who campaigned for the party said.
But Dumchev failed
to gain any seats in the city council.
Pro-government
lawmaker Volodymyr Ariev told thje Kyiv Post that Dumchev spent about $32
million on his campaign. It means that one vote cost Dumchev some Hr 30,000.
“For this money, he
could buy a smart phone for every voter. Instead, his political consultant will
buy a house after this campaign,” Ariev wrote on his Facebook page.
Dumchev was
unavailable for comment.
Kyiv Post staff
writers Veronika Melkozerova and Isobel Koshiw can be reached at [email protected]and [email protected],
respectively. Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko contributed reporting to
the story.
