Ukrainian voters have been left with an unenviable choice to make on April 21. A crowded field of 39 political non-entities, has-beens, charlatans, crooks, populists, self-promoters and dummy candidates vying for the post of the country’s president has been reduced to just two: Ukrainians must now choose between a failure and a fool.
While it can be argued that President Petro Poroshenko has achieved much over the past five years, indeed much more than any of his predecessors, his poll numbers unambiguously read out the measure of his failure.
Swept into power on public hopes of real change in Ukraine, just months after Ukrainians died on the streets to overthrow the increasingly authoritarian regime of former President Victor Yanukovych, Poroshenko had a real chance to break with the past.
That, he failed to do. He failed to give up his business interests in favor of the national interest. He appointed business partners and cronies to important positions. High-level corruption festered under him – even, shockingly, disgracefully, in the defense sector of a country at war. He broke his election pledge to end the war swiftly. A member of Ukraine’s old political elite, he failed to renew himself. Now Poroshenko’s worst political liability is simply that he is Poroshenko.
His achievements do not outweigh this baggage. Ordinary Ukrainians have seen their lives worsen under Poroshenko’s rule. The president’s victory in gaining a visa-free regime with the Schengen Area for Ukrainian citizens means little to the many of them who can’t afford to travel. A Tomos of autocephaly for an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church is a fine thing, but it does not put food on the table.
Little wonder the majority of Ukrainians don’t want live for another five years under Poroshenko.
But that leaves them no choice but to vote for the fool – comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who, given his commanding lead in the polls, is practically certain to be the next president. Calling Zelenskiy a fool is not a reference to his intelligence, which is obviously keen – it is a reference to the role he has taken as a fool, or court jester, who uses his humor and feigned naivety to speak truths to the king that none of his courtiers dare utter.
Zelenskiy has voiced the frustrations of the public, and used his youthful social media savvy to gambol around the Poroshenko campaign, at once humiliating the incumbent president and making him appear tired and weak. Through issuing challenges through a series of videos, Zelenskiy goaded Poroshenko into petulant and un-presidential reactions – over the last three weeks the president was constantly forced to respond to Zelenskiy’s antics, rather than taking the initiative himself.
Zelenskiy, meanwhile, has reassured nobody who seriously questions his ability to lead the country, avoiding contact with the media as much as possible, and saying little of substance about his program. There are genuine concerns that a President Zelenskiy might be influenced by the oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky. The candidate only revealed possible members of his administration and government three days before the second round vote. The fool remains enigmatic even as he prepares to become king. This should be of great concern to any responsible Ukrainian voter.
However, the old saying that “the people get the government they deserve” does not hold here. Ukraine’s political class was not able to produce a realistic opponent for Poroshenko. That is not the fault of Ukraine’s voters.
The problem is that in the five years since the EuroMaidan Revolution, Ukraine’s post-Soviet, oligarchic system of government has remained largely in place, and successfully resisted all efforts to dislodge it. The system is still personality based, rather than ideologically or party-based. As ever, the party makeup of parliament changes radically from Rada to Rada, as politicians jump ship and clamber aboard freshly launched political vessels to continue their journey to power.
The traditional left, right and center political divisions are blurry and indistinct in Ukraine, and old parties and ideologies like the communists are thoroughly discredited and increasingly irrelevant. New parties come and go in tandem with the forging and breaking of alliances between the top political players. There are no party structures to encourage political participation by ordinary citizens. Instead, in Ukraine parties are simply the means for the rich to become powerful. They are organizations for the promotion of top politicians – that’s why they are so often named after them.
This could have, should have changed after the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution. While under Poroshenko reformers in the government were marginalized, demoralized and neutralized, there are plenty of young reformers in civil society who could have come forward and stood for the real change that the Ukrainian electorate has long been crying out for.
The lesson of the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election is that anyone, literally anyone who is not a member of Ukraine’s tired old political elite could have trounced Poroshenko in the way Zelenskiy is doing. It is a massive failure of Ukraine’s political class that not one serious, reform-minded candidate came forward to do so.
