Ukrainian Comedian Leads Poroshenko, Despite Corrupt Oligarch’s Backing & Vague Platform
RFE/RL.ORG, 8 April 2019, So Far, Zelenskiy Is High On Charisma And Light On Policy. Do Ukrainians Care?
Summary/Extract: Comedian and TV star Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who is challenging incumbent Ukrainian President Porosheno in the second round of the country’s presidential elections, has been heavy on charisma and light on specifics.
Even veteran political analysts acknowledge the successes thus far of the 41-year-old Zelenskiy’ s strategy of providing a divided country with a blank political canvas, allowing voters to paint their own picture of what he is and what he could be as head of state. For those who see the past five years as a series of blunders and missed opportunities, that represents a reverse image of incumbent Petro Poroshenko, Zelenskiy’s opponent in the runoff in less than two weeks’ time.
To such prospective voters, “Poroshenko represents everything, I think, that Ukrainians dislike in business, society, and politics — oligarchs,” said Timothy Ash, a London-based economist focused on emerging economies.
It is a strategy that Zelenskiy has largely maintained since the first round, despite his own links to Ukrainian oligarch and outspoken Poroshenko nemesis Ihor Kolomoyskiy.
The 56-year-old Kolomoyskiy, who reportedly lives in exile in Israel, owns the TV channel on which Zelenskiy’s comedy programs are aired and has provided security, lawyers, and vehicles for the candidate. A U.S. report this week suggested that Kolomoyskiy — whose international activities span the metal, fossil-fuel, and finance businesses, among others — was the subject of an FBI investigation over possible financial wrongdoing, a charge that his lawyer rejected.
A spokeswoman for the agency, Tina Jagerson, told RFE/RL by e-mail that under Justice Department policy, the FBI “neither confirms nor denies the existence of any investigation.” So far, that connection with Kolomoyskiy hasn’t torpedoed Zelenskiy’s candidacy.
If opinion polls are right — and they largely were in the first round — then Zelenskiy stands a solid chance of defeating Poroshenko in their two-man race.
Indeed, if the comic whose only political experience is portraying a schoolteacher whose anti-corruption rant lands him in the presidency can hold on, Ukraine could wake up on April 22 with more questions about its future than answers.
“This vagueness is probably deliberate, because it increases the appeal of Zelenskiy to a wider centrist electorate,” said Alex Kokcharov, a principal research analyst on Ukraine at the London-based risk-assessment-firm IHS Markit. “However, if elected, this would probably translate into inconsistent and erratic policy-making.”
Critics would argue that erratic policymaking is hardly what a country that faces huge diplomatic and economic challenges, not least of which is a simmering armed conflict with Russia-backed fighters in its eastern Donbas region, needs.
Poroshenko, a confectionery mogul who also served terms as the minister of foreign affairs and of industry before emerging as a compromise candidate in 2014, has sought to play up his political experience as key to a steady and reliable alternative.
In an attempt to persuade voters still considering their options and wary of putting a political novice at the helm, Zelenskiy’s campaign released a pre-election program last week.
Former Finance Minister Oleksandr Danylyuk, former Economy Minister Aivaras Abromavicius, and a former member of the National Agency for Prevention of Corruption (NAPC), Rouslan Riaboshapka, were among the Zelenskiy camp’s team members providing insight into the candidate’s thinking and plans. All are also helping him to develop his platform.
Speaking to RFE/RL, Riaboshapka said fighting corruption would be Zelenskiy’s top priority if he became president.“His plan for the first 100 days will focus on anti-corruption measures,” Riaboshapka said on election night, promising to publish the plan before the second round.
Riaboshapka offered few details as to how that would happen. But Zelenskiy has promised that “we’ll institute the same rules for everyone. There’s one law for everyone. Just like I learned in law school,” he told Ukrayinska Pravda. Zelenskiy’s team also told RFE/RL that as president he would ban those convicted of corruption offenses from holding government posts and forbid those charged with corruption to be released on bail. Riaboshapka said that Zelenskiy would “relaunch” the special anti-corruption prosecutor’s office and other anti-corruption agencies and “guarantee their independence.”
Zelenskiy has complained that the war against Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, which has dragged on for five years and killed roughly 13,000 lives, needs to stop.
To make that happen, he has vowed to negotiate directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But he also said in an interview with the Ukraine TV channel this week that he would never agree to sacrifice any territory or citizens. Moscow and Kyiv “will have to talk…coming together somewhere in the middle,” he said in an interview late last year. The comment brought criticism from Ukrainian war veterans and nationalists.
For his part, Poroshenko has sought to portray Zelenskiy as unfit to defend Ukraine from Russia. Putin, Poroshenko said on the night of the first round of elections, “dreams of a soft, pliant, tender, giggling, inexperienced, weak, ideologically amorphous and politically undecided president of Ukraine. Are we really going to give him that opportunity?”
More recently, Zelenskiy has said he supports the Minsk peace accords — two agreements between Moscow and Kyiv signed in September 2014 and February 2015 that provide a road map to peace, albeit one that has allowed each side to interpret the direction of that road differently.
Zelenskiy has also said in the few interviews he’s done that he would like the United States and the United Kingdom to join peace negotiations. Currently, those talks are held in the Normandy format — a four-way dialogue between Ukraine, Russia, Germany, and France. He has also shown interest in allowing an international peacekeeping force to secure the war-torn east.
“I like [U.S. special representative for Ukraine] Kurt Volker’s plan: have a separation line, a peacekeeping mission, start with [liberating] small villages, then move on to Luhansk and Donetsk,” Zelenskiy said recently. The peacekeeper plan has been floated for the past two years, but Moscow has objected over who should control the eastern Ukraine-Russia border. With that border under the control of Kyiv, Moscow would in effect lose its direct support route to separatist forces, potentially losing much leverage.
Ukraine should also start a major “informational war” and win it, Zelenskiy said in the Ukraine interview.
A particularly tricky issue for Zelenskiy is likely to be Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in March 2014. He has backed the official Ukrainian position — that the Black Sea peninsula is indisputably Ukrainian. But he hasn’t provided any answers as to how to return control to Ukraine.Zelenskiy has said that “Crimea will be returned after the ruling regime changes in Russia” (Comment: In other words, Ukrainians, do no hold your breath.) and that he wants Russia to compensate Ukraine for annexing it and fomenting war in the east.
Unlike Poroshenko, who has been crystal-clear about his desire to see Ukraine join the European Union and NATO, Zelenskiy has taken a more cautious approach to the issue.
While seeming to support EU and NATO membership and saying he does not plan to change Ukraine’s westward course, he says he would like to give Ukrainians the opportunity to decide for themselves whether to stay on the course set upon by Poroshenko with referendums on the matters.
A native Russian speaker from south-central Kryviy Rih, Zelenskiy has spoken out against the Poroshenko government’s restriction on Russian language in government, media, and art. “We should not marginalize those who speak other languages,” he told Russian newspaper Argumenty i Fakty. “There’s the Ukrainian language, it’s the federal language,” he added. “But you should be able to speak whatever you want.”
Speaking with Novoye Vremya news magazine, Danylyuk said Zelenskiy’s team would present its plan this week to reform the judicial system. Zelenskiy has also spoken in general terms of his plan to create a favorable climate for foreign and domestic investments in Ukraine.
Broadly, Zelenskiy has stated his support for health-care. He has also laid out possible changes to election legislation, which include introducing an open-list, proportional-representation system for parties.
And Zelenskiy has also proposed renewing state pensions for Ukrainians living in the territories of eastern Ukraine currently controlled by Russia-backed separatists — something that many there perceived as a punitive measure introduced by Poroshenko. For more, please see the hyperlink below:
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