If elected Kyiv mayor, Oleksandr Omelchenko would be the oldest person to hold the post in city’s history.
A veteran of Ukrainian politics, the
77-year-old Omelchenko was born the same day and year as Leonid Kuchma,
Ukraine’s second president. Omelchenko served as a head of Kyiv City Council
for 10 years, and was also Kyiv mayor from 1999 until 2006.
Now he hopes to beat 28 rivals for the post,
which include incumbent Vitali Klitschko, the retired world boxing champion,
Dnipropetrovsk native Gennady Korban, Kyiv restaurateur Sergiy Gusovsky, and
Volodymyr Makeyenko, who was in charge of the city during the EuroMaidan
Revolution of the winter of 2013-14.
In a recent interview, Omelchenko said Kyiv
was going “nowhere,” because none of his successors had worked at developing
Kyiv’s urban planning.
Almost a decade later he last had the job, he
says he still has the best answers to the capital’s needs.
Improving city infrastructure with the help of
transport corridors and underpasses is among his priorities. He also wants to
buy double-decker buses and ensure more housing is built in the city. For
middle- and low-income residents, Omelchenko said he plans to focus on the
social agenda and ensure all the drug stores in the city have affordable
medicine.
Some eight metro stations have opened in the
capital after Omelchenko took office in 1996. He pledges that every year from
now on, at least one more metro station should be constructed in Kyiv.
The ex-mayor also boasts that he will bring a
balanced team of new and “experienced” activists. However, his team appears to
be made up of people whose political backgrounds raise questions.
Omelchenko’s office didn’t answer Kyiv Post
request for the interview.
Omelchenko’s Unity (Yednist) party list
includes Kostyantyn Yalovy, a son-in-law of the Party of Regions’ lawmaker
Viktor Pylypyshyn. Yalovy’s father Volodymyr also hopes to get a seat on that
party’s ticket. Oleksandr Brodsky, a businessman and member of Kyiv City
Council, one of Pylypyshyn’s friends, is also on Omelchenko’s team, according
to the Chesno pro-transparency civic movement.
Some members of the former Kyiv Mayor Leonid
Chernovetsky’s team are also now members of the Unity party.
Experts believe Omelchenko’s team could be the
reason he fails in his bid to win back his old job.
“The people on his list are the main obstacle,
as we see lobbyist groups and businessman among them – it suggests that
Omelchenko’s name may just be being used as a brand,” political analyst
Volodymyr Fesenko told the Kyiv Post. “Another obstacle is his age.”
During the 2014 Kyiv mayoral election,
Omelchenko placed fourth with 7.5 percent of the vote. According to recent
polls, the ex-mayor may get some 10 percent of the vote, compared frontrunner
Klitschko’s 25.8 percent support.
If the polls are correct, he thus has a
good chance of getting through to a second round runoff with Klitschko.
Omelchenko’s support base is mostly females over 45.
Kostyantyn Bondarenko, a political analyst
with the Institute for Ukrainian Policy, says that Omelchenko will do well if
middle-age people turn out to vote. And traditionally, people older than 45 are
more likely to vote than younger Ukrainians, he explains.
While mayor, Omelchenko gained the reputation
of a “constructor” for renovating Kyiv’s downtown. Before entering politics, he
got a degree from the Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture
and worked for the state Kyivreconstruction company.
However, Omelchenko’s last term in office was
marred by controversial construction projects in the historical center,
including a skyscraper in Mariinsky Park next to Ukraine’s parliament building,
and his complete reconstruction of Maidan Nezalezhnosti Square.
In 2011, the glass dome of the Globus shopping
mall appeared on the once green Maidan square, together with a soaring statue
dedicated to the country’s independence. Historians and architects alike
slammed the design as not in keeping with the city’s architectural style.
“…As a result, it distorted the (historical)
face of the city,” says Mykhailo Kalnytsky, a Kyiv historian and the member of
Ukrainian Association for Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments.
A controversial incident from six years ago
also might affect voter sentiments. Back in 2009, Omelchenko was involved in a
car accident, with a 48-year-old man on the Stolychne highway being knocked
down and killed by Omelchenko’s Mitsubishi Pajero SUV. A criminal case was
opened, but it was closed a year later, with investigators finding that the
pedestrian had violated traffic rules.
All the same, according to a poll carried out
by Kyiv International Institute of Sociology in 2014, at least 50 percent of
the residents of Kyiv consider Omelchenko to be the best mayor the city has had
yet. Fesenko believes that Omelchenko’s support could therefore be high, as
many people remember him as a “good manager.”
“A lot of people would vote for him as they
remember ‘the good old times,’ when everything was fine and people could take
loans,” Fesenko told the Kyiv Post. “Compared to (his successors), he doesn’t
look to be the worst choice. Besides, people tend to forget everything quickly
– something that happened 10 years ago is already in the past.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Goncharova can be reached at [email protected].
