Comedian, 'Gas Princess' Among Hopefuls To Compete For Ukrainian Presidency

The registration process for candidates for Ukraine's presidential election is officially over, with Ukrainian Central Election Commission (CEC) having already registered 30 candidates out of a record 91 people who submitted their bids

KIEV (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 05th February, 2019) The registration process for candidates for Ukraine's presidential election is officially over, with Ukrainian Central Election Commission (CEC) having already registered 30 candidates out of a record 91 people who submitted their bids.

The three front-runners in the polls have already been successfully registered as candidates: incumbent President Petro Poroshenko, head of Ukraine's pro-European Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party Yulia Tymoshenko and comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Experts believe that Poroshenko needs the presidency to guarantee his personal integrity and favorable conditions for his business. For Tymoshenko, the presidency has been a long-cherished dream, and this campaign will be her last chance to fulfill it. Zelenskiy, on the other hand, has demonstrated a desire to make fun of the authorities and the entire electoral process rather than to actually win, according to political analysts.

Meanwhile, other candidates are trying to somehow attract attention. One has started a campaign to find a wife, while another has suggested shooting officials and declaring a default on his debts in order to maintain a scandalous image.

Political analysts believe that high competition and election corruption are key markers of this presidential campaign. In their opinion, the election will be held in two rounds. Most likely, Poroshenko and Tymoshenko will face each other in the second round.

POROSHENKO: ANTI-RUSSIAN RHETORIC, DESIRE TO JOIN EU

Poroshenko came late in announcing his plans to run for a second term. Back in the summer, media speculated that he may decide to not run due low approval ratings. Despite the fact that Poroshenko won the first round during a snap election in May 2014 with 55 percent of the vote, various polls now project him only receiving around 15 percent of the vote in March.

Poroshenko took the helm of the country just a few months after the Euromaidan events, in which he was on the side of the protesters, and announced a course for European integration. Ukraine later signed an association agreement with the European Union and canceled its non-aligned status, thereby confirming its intention to join NATO. Since June 2017, Ukrainian citizens have been able to travel as tourists to the Schengen Area without visas.

In addition, Poroshenko has over the past five years repeatedly waved "final goodbyes" to Russia, which, prior to Euromaidan, was Ukraine's main trading partner. During his presidency, relations between the two countries have hit rock bottom, and Poroshenko himself has used the "Russian threat" to scare the Ukrainian people. Moscow, in turn, has stressed that it is not a party to the internal Ukrainian conflict.

This year Poroshenko announced that he had decided to run as an independent candidate. His election campaign is based on three ideas: restoring the army, increasing the role of the Ukrainian language and establishing a new church.

The president has mentioned modernization the army before, and military experts have repeatedly pointed out that the "most advanced" Ukrainian equipment was created on the basis of Soviet weapons and not fundamentally different from their analogues.

An attempt to get rid of the Russian language is well under way. The Ukrainian parliament has already passed in the first reading a bill to ensure that the Ukrainian language is used as the Primary one in almost all spheres of life.

The new church in Ukraine, created on the initiative of Poroshenko on the basis of non-canonical structures, is not recognized by local churches. The independence decree, or tomos of autocephaly, it received from Constantinople does not make it fully independent, however, prompting the Russian Orthodox Church to call the autocephaly an "empty shell."

In addition to "the army, language and faith," Poroshenko remains a staunch advocate of Ukrainian accession to both the EU and NATO. However, according to experts, this will not happen in the near future.

Before the election, Poroshenko decided to lower the degree of anti-Russian hysteria slightly and spoke about the need for a "cold peace" with Ukraine's neighbor. Nevertheless, his program is largely based on anti-Russian rhetoric, with Poroshenko being portrayed as "the only person capable of confronting Moscow."

Poroshenko has also not overlooked the painful issue of utility tariffs. A subsidy monetization program will be launched right before the election and is expected to give 4 million Ukrainians who use subsidies an average of 1,500 hryvnias (about $60) in cash by March. Pension payments are also expected to go up by 17-18 percent after March 1 and potentially give a positive electoral effect.

The presidential administration is optimistic and has no doubt about Poroshenko's prospects for winning the second round of the election. Tymoshenko is considered to be his main opponent.

For Tymoshenko, who, according to polls, has been the front-runner in recent months, it will be the third attempt to become the head of state, and most likely the last. In 2010, Tymoshenko narrowly lost to Yanukovych in the runoff with a gap of 3.48 percent of the vote, while in 2014 she came in second in the first round.

"You cannot lose the election three times. Either she wins now, or it will be the end," one of the Ukrainian oligarchs told the Ukrayinska Pravda newspaper.

Tymoshenko understands this, and her team has made efforts to develop a new image for her. The politician gave up her signature braid, and started wearing glasses and suits similar to the ones Claire Underwood had on US tv series House of Cards. The politician began to personally run her Facebook page and once posted a video where she was cooking cheese pancakes. With these tricks, her team is trying to win over young voters since Tymoshenko's supporters are generally people aged 40 and over.

The Batkivshchyna party congress dedicated to nominating Tymoshenko was a real show. It played a movie about "Tymoshenko's struggle in politics, her imprisonment and the desire to change the country."

Tymoshenko's slogan in the election is the phrase "I believe in Ukraine." Her team has developed a new program named "New course," which envisages the creation of a new constitution, which the politician promises to adopt through a national referendum right after the election.

To resolve the conflict in the Donbas region, which has been ongoing since 2014, Tymoshenko intends to form a war cabinet.

"I know that Donbas will be Ukrainian. We need real peace, not the illusion of it," she said.

In addition, Tymoshenko is expected to raise the issue of increased gas prices in the election campaign. The politician has already promised that gas tariffs would be cut by half after she took office. Tymoshenko also said that she would resign after 100 days if she did not fulfill her promises.

The incumbent authorities constantly accuse Tymoshenko of populism and consider her to be a pro-Russian candidate, noting that it was she who in 2009 agreed with Russia on gas contracts that were unprofitable for Ukraine. Tymoshenko, who made her fortune in the gas industry in the 1990s and has been dubbed the "gas princess," has repeatedly denied such accusations.�

According to the Ukrainian expert Ruslan Bortnik, Tymoshenko would try to play the constructive opposition card.

"For the East, she seeks to look less radical in humanitarian terms than the current government and for the West, not as corrupt. Tymoshenko expects her rivals to make mistakes and is rising to the top of the electoral ladder at their expense, even with significant negative ratings.

Yulia's strong suit is the experience and systematic work on the development of the Batkivshchyna party structure, and the ability to talk with oligarchs. And just this resource can be a decisive factor for Tymoshenko," Bortnik said.

Head of the Penta Center for Applied Political Studies Volodymyr Fesenko predicts that Tymoshenko will be the undisputed leader of the first round of the election, but that it will be hard for her to win the second one.

"Even if Tymoshenko passes to the second round with Poroshenko, although sociologists give her a big leverage, there will be a pretty intense struggle. As sociologists say, the fight of anti-ratings. According to the results of opinion polls, Poroshenko is losing, as his anti-rating is 50 percent and Tymoshenko's is 25 percent. Victory depends on the mobilization of their active voters and the demobilization of those who are against," Fesenko said.

ZELENSKIY: MOST CHEERFUL CANDIDATE

Political scientists and sociologists have tried to get voters used to the idea that Zelenskiy is a presidential candidate. They consistently included his name in all presidential ratings throughout last year, even though Zelenskiy announced his intention to run for the presidency only a few minutes before New Year's.

The Ukrainian 1+1 channel, owned by oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, whom media has called the comedian's main partner, broadcast his address instead of the president's New Year's speech.

In political circles, it was only a matter of time before Zelenskiy took his place as a presidential candidate. According to media reports, Poroshenko's administration began measuring Zelenskiy's ratings from the beginning of 2016. The reason for this was because of a TV show called Servant of the People, where the main character is an honest school teacher named Vasyl Holoborodko, played by Zelenskiy, who becomes the president and begins to fight corruption and oligarchs.

According to the latest polls, Zelenskiy is one of the top three candidates in the presidential race and has every chance to pass to the second round. One poll projects him receiving 19 percent of the vote. According to a survey conducted by Sociological Group "Rating," Zelenskiy had come out as the front-runner ahead of both Tymoshenko and Poroshenko.

According to the entertainer's team, Zelenskiy's supporters are people aged 18-30. Geographically, they are concentrated in cities and villages in the south and east of the country.

"The general fatigue of the voter from traditional politicians, both pro-government and opposition, could definitely be attributed to Volodymyr Zelenskiy's assets. Zelenskiy can show quite a decent result due to his novel, interesting and unusual format of the election campaign. He could go to the second round and if not win," Bortnik said.

As part of his campaign, Zelenskiy invited Ukrainians to help create an election program by naming the five main problems of the country. Within a few days, social media users had suggested thousands of proposals, including the elimination of taxes, and execution of parliamentarians and the government by firing squad.

The comedian has repeatedly stated that his main goal after winning the election would be to eliminate corruption in Ukraine.

"We will eliminate all corruption ... We will impose the same rules for everyone. Our law is the only one for everyone, the single one for everyone," Zelenskiy said.

He also promised that if he won the election, he would try to reach a ceasefire agreement in Donbas and involve Western countries in the Minsk agreements.

After several serious interviews, it became obvious that Zelenskiy was confused about many issues related to economic and political processes, and did not fully understand the distribution of powers in Ukrainian government. Moreover, when the showman cannot answer a question, he laughs it off.

A number of experts suggest that Zelenskiy is a decoy candidate and that his goal is to prank the government and scoop up votes to make it difficult to have the election in just one round. The candidate's team has denied these accusations.

In any case, if Zelenskiy shows a decent result in the election, it will at least be a good basis for his populist Servant of the People party, which will most likely become a serious player in the parliamentary elections in October.

This election is going to be highly competitive, since there will be about 30 Names on the ballot. Former and current parliamentarians, officials, businessmen and city mayors are among the candidates.

The largest group consists of party candidates who will try to use their results in the presidential election to help their parities perform well in the parliamentary elections.

Former Minister of Defense Anatoly Gritsenko, who is running for the third time, is among the serious contenders who could pass to the second round. Gritsenko has been in politics for some time but has never formed a distinct image of himself in the minds of ordinary Ukrainians. His main promise in the current campaign is fight corruption.

Two presidential candidates emerged after the Opposition Bloc party split: Yuriy Boyko, the leader of the Opposition Platform - For Life party, and Oleksandr Vilkul, a member of the Opposition Bloc in the Ukrainian parliament.

Boyko's main election promise is to restore peace in Donbas through direct negotiations with the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic. The main priorities of his party are poverty alleviation and the reduction of utility tariffs.

Vilkul's campaign is built on a promise to achieve peace in Donbas within six months and to reinforce the non-aligned status of the country.

According to experts, the simultaneous participation of Boyko and Vilkul in the presidential campaign rules out real chances of success for either, as they are focused on the same voters � residents of the Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine. According to opinion polls, almost 10 percent of voters are ready to cast their votes for Boyko, and a little more that 1 percent had pledged their support for Vilkul.

Some candidates have decided to use the campaign to accomplish their own goals. Former Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources Ihor Shevchenko, immediately after the CEC registered him, announced that he was looking for a wife. On his Facebook page, the ex-minister posted a photograph of a billboard conveying this very desire.

"Do you want to become the President's wife? Ihor Shevchenko is looking for a wife," the billboard reads.

Another presidential candidate, leader of Socialist Party of Ukraine, Illia Kiva, has already proven himself to be a rather scandalous person. He regularly shocks the public with extraordinary statements and admits that he strikes for shock value. Kiva offers Ukrainians "a recipe that can change life." He describes this recipe simply as "default [of debt], reprivatization and introduction of the death penalty for officials."

Infamous Ukrainian lawmaker Nadezhda Savchenko has also announced her intention to run for the presidency of Ukraine. Savchenko is being held in custody on suspicion of preparing terrorist attacks in the parliament building and in Kiev's central government quarter. Her representative submitted documents on her behalf to the CEC, without having the necessary amount of money to bail her out, which could be grounds for having her bid refused. At the same time, according to political analysts, runing in the election is a not only an opportunity for Savchenko to stay in politics, but also a method of self-defense in the upcoming trial.