No Options: Ukrainians In Poland Unwilling To Vote In 2nd Round
Mohammad Ali (@ChaudhryMAli88) Published April 19, 2019 | 06:37 PM
Ukrainians living in Poland do not demonstrate a strong desire to cast their votes in the second round of the Ukrainian presidential election, slated for Sunday
The Ukrainians polled by Sputnik do not believe either the current president, Petro Poroshenko, or his competitor in this race, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, as many do not see a fundamental difference between them. The voters also do not feel enthusiastic about the election due to the need to be included in the voter lists in advance, as they will not be able to vote otherwise.
There are up to 1.5 million Ukrainian citizens living in Poland on a permanent or temporary basis. According to official data, about 30,000 of them are registered with the consulates, providing for them to be able to take part in the voting.
Oleh, a former resident of Ukraine's city of Vinnytsia, who is now an owner of a small construction business in Warsaw, is closely following the events around the Ukrainian election, but is not going to vote. He sees no fundamental difference between the two candidates.
"Who is there to choose from? Poroshenko and Zelenskiy differ only in appearance. They have the same principles. Everything has long been clear with Poroshenko, but look at how Zelenskiy is conducting his election campaign: the same techniques, the same methods, the same technologies. The soul of a talented artist disappeared somewhere during the election, and there are only technologies left," the man said.
However, Oleh does not believe in Zelenskiy's self-sufficiency and has no doubt in his dependence on the oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi.
"Why are we talking about Zelenskiy anyway? It is ridiculous. Zelenskiy's voters have to admit to themselves that they are actually voting for Kolomoyskyi. Well, everything about this fellow has been clear for a long time. I think that everyone who votes for Zelenskiy understands that in their hearts. Those who do not understand, to put it mildly, have got the wrong idea," Oleh added.
Tatiana came to Poland with her daughter from the Ukrainian city of Yahotyn, near Kiev, a few days ago. Together they found jobs in cleaning services. Tatiana cast her vote in the first round while she was back at home, and she is not going to vote in the second one.
"I voted for [the leader of the Ukrainian Opposition Platform For Life party] Yuriy Boyko. He is the only one who could quickly stop the main Ukrainian pain, the war in Donbas. And looking at the candidates in the second round, it becomes clear that they are basically the same," Tatiana noted.
She is confident that the remaining candidates think only about themselves rather than about people.
"Everything is clear with Poroshenko. He served an entire presidential term, and nothing has changed. It only got worse. And what will Zelenskiy do? Will he stop the war, raise pensions and salaries, make a million Ukrainians return from Poland and raise Ukraine's economy, instead of the European Union's? He will not! Zelenskiy is likely to win, but the oligarchs have agreed on everything and planned everything long ago. But there is no place for ending the war in their plans, and the last thing they think about is people," Tatiana said.
Bohdan did not want to say what he did in Poland, but he admitted that he would go to the polling station. He said he was choosing the lesser of two evils, and that he was feeling the meaninglessness in what was going on.
"I will vote for Zelenskiy, but not because I strongly believe him, just that I am sick and tired of Poroshenko ... He and his circle do not care about anything but money. They do not care about Ukraine. They do not care about Ukraine's future, but they want ordinary Ukrainians to believe in their country and work hard for its benefit. And they will pillage this benefit. So, definitely not Poroshenko," he added.
But Zelenskiy also did not seem to be a reliable candidate to him.
"As for Zelenskiy, there is little trust in him, too. If he really is so honest and independent, as in the [TV show] 'Servant of the People,' then he will be crushed and no one will even notice. But we know for sure that Kolomoyskyi is behind him. A while back, Poroshenko offended Kolomoyskyi, and now he decided to invest money in Zelenskiy, so that no one prevented him from doing business," Bohdan told Sputnik.
Nikita, a student of the Main school of Fire Service in Warsaw, told Sputnik that he would not vote either, and that he regretted the time he had spent on voting in the first round.
"I do not see much sense in casting my vote in this election, but I decided to vote in the first round three weeks ago. I had to go to the embassy in the middle of the week so that they add me to the [voter] lists. I lost a lot of time. There was a large queue in front of the embassy on the election day. We had to stand in line for more than an hour," Nikita said.
He also noted that the process of voting was poorly managed.
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