Page 5 - UKRRptAug18

2.0 Politics
2.1 Pro-Russia political parties may unite for 2019 elections
Ukraine’s Russian-oriented opposition forces should unite behind a single candidate in next year’s presidential and parliamentary elections, Vadim Rabinovich, head of the For Life party, said on his Facebook page on July 4.
Ukraine will hold presidential elections in March 2019 and parliamentary elections in October 2019. The For Life party is currency polling at 5.6% in the last Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) poll in fifth place, but with enough support to clear the 5% threshold.
Rabinovich spoke of “opposition forces” without explicitly mentioning any Russian orientation, but he specifically named the heads of the Opposition Bloc, as well as the smaller Renaissance and Agrarian parties, which are all Russia-oriented.
If these parties were to unite then their collective polling numbers would be 13.1% that would put them ahead of front runner
Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, which leads the KIIS poll with 11.5%. Moreover, the two smaller parties will not clear the 5% threshold and so their votes will be then distributed to the other parties that do. It they unite then Rabinovich and his allies will control a larger share of the Rada after the vote.
“In one of the most tragic moments for Ukraine, when the country’s fate is on the table, each of us should forget about our political ambitions and work towards a single victory,” he wrote.
Head of the Opposition Bloc Yuriy Boyko would earn 10.6% of votes amongst the decided voters and Rabinovich would earn 8.4% in the March presidential elections, according to KIIS.
In the October 2019 parliamentary vote, the Opposition Bloc would earn 11.4% support and the For Life party would have 10.5%, according to the same poll.
“If the Russian-oriented parties are going to unite for the elections, it can only be behind Yuriy Boyko and his Opposition Bloc, which have been consistently leading the polls this year among the Russian-oriented forces. Moreover, Boyko and the Opposition Bloc have more resources than Rabinovich and his For Life populist project. So either Rabinovich is laying the groundwork for a possible deal to back Boyko (and possibly merge his party into the Opposition Bloc), or he is hyping himself up as the leading Russian-oriented candidate, which we don’t view as credible,” Zenon Zawada of Concorde Capital said in a note.
5 UKRAINE Country Report August 2018 www.intellinews.com