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manipulated by Ukraine’s business and political elites. But the torrent of opinion polls do suggest at this stage it is a three horse race between the “incumbent” President Petro Poroshenko, the “disruptor” former PM, Yulia Tymoshenko, and the “joker”, literally, in the pack, Zelenskiy.
Poroshenko clearly has the benefit of incumbency on his side – the considerable weight of the state apparatus, and the state budget to wield, and there have been clear signs of fiscal pump priming early this year.
The power of patronage in Ukraine, given the dominance of oligarchic groups, should not be under-estimated. Poroshenko is also playing up his achievements, including macro stability/recovery, security – halting Russia’s encroachment in Donbas, and the resurrection of the Ukrainian military into a fairly formidable fighting force – and autocephalous status for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the latter of, which is a huge victory against Moscow. He is pushing the idea that while he has his faults, he is a stable hand on the rudder at a still difficult time, and the greatest assurance of Ukraine’s Western orientation.
Poroshenko though suffers big negative ratings – even higher than Tymoshenko – reflective I guess of the fact that most Ukrainians have not seen much of an improvement in their living standards over the past five years, and want something different – there is a sense the country wants change, something different, and I guess in an age when anti-establishment figures/movements (Trump, Five Star, Brexit, Syriza) are dominant.
Poroshenko is the archetypical representative of the Ukrainian oligarchic establishment – everything that many Ukrainians simply abhor. He has been in around power/the heights of the Ukrainian economy for much of the past two decades – serving as minister of foreign affairs, head of the national security-council, NBU council chair, et al, before becoming president in 2014.
And remember back in 2014 there was little enthusiasm for his presidency, even though he won a first round victory with 54% - rather he was seen as a safe pair of hands who could manage a crisis war economy.
And to give him huge credit, he did that – he stabilised the macro, and went for peace (the Minsk accords) at a time (2014-2015) when many people pushed for outright war with Russia, which likely Ukraine would have lost. But as noted above, it looks like Ukrainians want something different, which means Poroshenko is fighting an uphill battle to win re-election, and remember only one president in Ukraine’s independence era has won a second term – Leonid Kuchma.
Tymoshenko, meanwhile, is hardly something new or that different, to Poroshenko, for voters. She has been in/around Ukrainian politics for as much time as Poroshenko, but actually only in office for 4-5 years (as dep PM, then PM). I guess therein she can claim not to be wholly responsible for Ukraine’s current state – albeit she is part of the oligarchic political class (like Poroshenko), which have failed Ukraine over the past 30 years.
But perhaps what marks Tymoshenko out, unlike Poroshenko, is that she is seen as a disruptor – a women, in still a man’s political world in Ukraine – much more of a populist (we can debate this, given the past two years of Poroshenko rule has been much more populist, as reflected in the IMF
10 UKRAINE Country Report March 2019 www.intellinews.com