Page 17 - bne_newspaper_January_25_2019

Eastern Europe
January 25, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 17
Tymoshenko, Boiko throw their hats into Ukraine’s presidential election ring
Ben Aris in Berlin
Two of the heavyweight candidates threw their hats into the Ukrainian presidential election ring on January 22: opposition leader, former prime minister and head of Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party Yulia Tymoshenko and one of the founders of the Opposition Platform — For Life, MP Yuriy Boiko.
Boiko represents the pro-Russian fraction in Ukrainian politics, but while he would clearly move closer to Russia and try and end the war in the east, even the pro-Russian fractions remain committed to Ukraine’s pivot towards the EU and would not undo the deals made so far.
Polling at under 10% Boiko is unlikely to win
or even make it to the second round, but with equally important parliamentary elections slated for October, politicians like Boiko are using the presidential campaigns to boost their visibility in order to win support in the Rada elections.
Tymoshenko, on the other hand, is the clear leader in the polls with circa 20% of those saying they would vote plumping for the firebrand Orange Revolution leader.
Her candidacy is no surprise has she has been campaigning for months, well ahead of her rivals, and has plastered the cities of Ukraine with posters.
"I'm running for the presidency," she told a session of her nationalist Batkivshchyna party to cheers from the crowd.
Yulia Tymoshenko will stand for president in the March elections.
"I've made mistakes," said Tymoshenko. "Maybe sometimes I'm wrong, but I'm wrong sincerely," she told her supporters.
"Today we are entering a new era — an era of success, of happiness, of enlightenment... today we begin Ukraine's journey towards real and powerful greatness."
The 58-year-old has 16% support going into the two-round election, according to surveys, well ahead of incumbent President Petro Poroshenko with 13.8%.
Tymoshenko has made a remarkable political comeback. During the 2014 Euromaidan protests she was languishing in jail, following her arrest by former president Viktor Yanukovych on trumped up charges designed to remove a political rival. She was quickly released and brought to Maidan Square to talk to the crowd still in a wheelchair after Yanukovych fled to Russia as his government fell. However, she got a respectful, but tepid reception from the crowd. At the time it seemed that politics had moved on since her leading role in the Orange revolution in 2006.
But since then Tymoshenko has taken a starkly popularist and anti-IMF stance that has played
to the gallery. A recent IRI poll found that some 70% of Ukrainians believe the country is going in the wrong direction under President Poroshenko, and Tymoshenko has played on the popular dissatisfaction to bolster her position. She has also invested time and money into building up a grassroots support machine to underpin her bid in