Editor’s Note: Election Watch is a regular update on the state of the 2019 races for the presidency and parliament. The country elected a new president on April 21 and will vote for a new parliament on July 21. The Election Watch project is supported by the National Endowment for Democracy. The donor doesn’t influence the content. Visit kyivpost.com for more election coverage.
It has been a hectic week in Ukrainian politics: parties unveiling their candidates and anti-corruption watchdogs and journalists rushing to check them.
As parties must rapidly pick their candidates for party lists and single-member districts, they’re mindful of a deadline to submit lists by June 20. That leaves a month for campaigning before Ukrainians head to the polls on July 21 to elect a new parliament.
Some parties have published more than 100 names, while others have revealed only the top 10. Some candidates are experienced, while many are total newcomers with little public profile. And some new parties have pushed for greater transparency and diversity.
Here are a few takeaways from the latest polls and party lists.
New parties dominate
Currently, the leading party is Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People, named after the actor-turned-president’s hit television series. According to the latest survey by the Rating Group, it is polling at 47.5 percent among the decided voters. It outstrips its nearest competitor, the Russia-friendly Opposition Platform — For Life party, by 37 points.
Servant of the People has also demonstrated the most transparency of the parties: It published a list of 201 candidates. A group of them were members of and experts from Zelensky’s presidential campaign office. Some were selected through an open call for candidates. Another 199 people will run as representatives of the party in single-member districts.
Another newcomer, the Voice (Holos in Ukrainian) party of rock star Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, has rapidly climbed in the rankings. The musician announced his party just a month ago when it polled at under 1 percent. Now, Voice has 6.4 percent of the vote and all chances to make it to parliament.
Voice also published a list of the 195 candidates on its party list and 72 candidates running in single-member districts.
The Strength and Honor party, led by former security service chief Ihor Smeshko, is very close to reaching the 5-percent threshold to enter parliament. A low-key figure just months ago, Smeshko surprisingly finished sixth in the first round of the presidential election in March, attracting the votes of older people seeking a responsible, experienced candidate who is relatively distant from the top echelons of Ukrainian politics.
The biggest losers of this election could be People’s Front, Samopomich, and the Radical Party. All three have sizeable factions in the current Verkhovna Rada, but likely will not make it into the next parliament.
It has been roughly two weeks since ex-Odesa Governor and former President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili got back his Ukrainian citizenship and returned to Ukraine. Initially, he said he would not run for parliament. He even declined an offer from Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko to lead his party UDAR into parliament.
So much for that. Now, he is making his own bid with his Movement of New Forces party. Besides Saakashvili, the party list includes ex-deputy Prosecutor General David Sakvarelidze in the number two spot, some anti-corruption activists, and even a chess champion.
Rock star and leader of the Voice political party Svyatoslav Vakarchuk speaks with journalists while surrounded by some of his party’s top candidates for parliament on June 8, 2019, in Kyiv. (Photo by Volodymyr Petrov)
Old forces consolidate
Challenged by newcomers, veteran lawmakers aren’t ready to give up. Many are rebranding and forming new alliances to increase their chances.
Former President Petro Poroshenko changed the name of his political party to European Solidarity. Currently, it is polling in the top five parties. Parliament Speaker Andriy Parubiy is one of its biggest assets since Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman broke away from his long-time ally Poroshenko to run with his own party, Ukrainian Strategy. Groysman scraped his top 10 from current ministers and a couple of lawmakers with the People’s Front faction.
Ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna said her team is determined to go into coalition with Zelensky’s party. Number two on Tymoshenko’s list is once-time oligarch and ex-Donetsk Oblast Governor Serhiy Taruta of the Osnova party, who dropped out of the presidential race in her favor.
The Russia-friendly opposition camp, which split in two last year in the run-up to the presidential election, has also gone through serious reshuffles. The party that formed after the split, Opposition Platform — For Life, proved a success. It currently polls second, much to the chagrin of pro-Western and nationalist politicians.
Its top 10 candidates include heavyweight pro-Russian politicians such as Yanukovych-era minister Yuriy Boyko, president of the All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress Vadym Rabinovych, and oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk, a close ally to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The depleted Opposition Bloc party has recently joined with the Party of Peace, Nashi (Ours), Vidrodzhennya (Revival), and the Doviryai Dilam (Trust in Deeds) parties. The yet unnamed bloc enlisted mayors of five cities — Kharkiv, Odesa, Mariupol, Zaporizhia, Uzhgorod — as well as Vadym Novynskyi, the Russian-born business partner of oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, and some former members of the Party of Regions.
The top three nationalist parties — Svoboda, National Corps, and Right Sector — reunited after their political alliance broke up amid disagreements on a single presidential candidate. The new bloc includes some other nationalist organizations and reached a consensus: National Corps leader Andriy Biletskiy is the formal head of the bloc but number one on the list is Svoboda chair Oleh Tyahnybok.
Former President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko introduces his team during the European Solidarity party convention on July 9, 2019, in Kyiv. (Mikhail Palinchak)
More women?
In 2014, only 50 women were elected to parliament, two of them in single-district constituencies. One way to raise women’s representation in parliament from the present 11 percent is to have more female candidates in leading parties and have them placed higher up on their lists.
The frontrunner in the race, Servant of the People, has 63 women among 201 candidates on its list. Only five of them are in the top 20. It happened for objective reasons, said lawyer Iryna Venediktova, the number three candidate.
“While making the list we didn’t try to fit into any pattern or create a beautiful picture. The male contingent objectively turned out to be stronger than the female one. But I hope the situation will change,” she told the Kyiv Post. “I hope other women will join. We really need more women because they have a different approach (to politics).”
Voice has 59 women on its 195-candidate party list, with eight of them in top 20, including Yulia Klymenko, head of the Kyiv School of Economics and ex-deputy economy minister, and Kira Rudik, CEO of Amazon-owned tech company Ring Ukraine.
The second best polling party, Opposition Platform — For Life, has only four women among the 35 candidates it published. Only two of them are in the top 20.
Crimean Tatars
In 2014, Crimean Tatar candidates all ran with one party, the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko. This time, representatives of the indigenous people of Crimea are using a different strategy: placing candidates at the top of several party lists to ensure more seats in the parliament.
“It was a 100-percent coordinated strategy approved by the leaders of the Crimean Tatar people,” said Rustem Umerov, a young Crimean Tatar businessman running as No. 18 on the Voice party list.
Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Dzhemilev and Refat Chubarov, chairman of the Crimean Tatar’s Mejlis representative body, were the only two Crimean Tatar lawmakers elected to the Verkhovna Rada in 2014 with Poroshenko Bloc. This year, Dzhemilev remained with the ex-president’s party, rebranded as European Solidarity. He was joined by Mejlis Deputy Chair Akhtem Chiygoz. Chubarov moved to Smeshko’s Strength and Honor party.
Besides Umerov, Tamila Tasheva, co-founder of the Crimea-SOS non-governmental organization and No. 26 on the Voice party ballot, represents the new generation of Crimean Tatars going into politics. Emine Dzheppar, who served as the deputy minister of information policy, is running in the top five of Groysman’s Ukrainian Strategy.
“It’s important that the young generation of Crimean Tatars becomes a part of the Ukrainian Parliament and for the governing bodies of Crimean Tatars to get revitalized — so the young can influence the decision-making processes,” Tasheva said.
Liberal lawmakers
Some of the pro-reform, pro-Western lawmakers of the current parliament have no political home in the new race.
Both the Servant of the People and Voice announced that they will not accept any sitting or former lawmakers on their lists, although Voice will allow them to represent the party in single-member districts. Thus, ex-Samopomich member Viktoria Voytsitska will run in a district in Rivne Oblast with Voice.
Some of the reformists joined other parties. For instance, Olena Sotnyk, a lawmaker from Samopomich, is No. 2 on Smeshko’s party list.
Others are running as independents in single-member districts. Svitlana Zalishchuk is running in her native town of Zhashkiv in Cherkasy Oblast.
Lawmaker Serhiy Leshchenko said he has not yet decided whether to run in his district in Kyiv. Lawmaker Hanna Hopko, who chairs the parliament’s foreign affairs committee, is running as an independent and is deciding between Kyiv, or her native Lviv Oblast.
Kyiv Post staff writer Artur Korniienko and editor Matthew Kupfer contributed to this report.
