Two of the country’s most prominent reformers are running for elected positions in Odesa with the Solidarity Party, part of the pro-presidential Bloc of Petro Poroshenko.
The bloc, during its convention on Sept. 23, nominated Alexander Borovik as its candidate for mayor of Odesa, along with Maria Gaidar for deputy head of Odesa Oblast Administration. Borovik is also running for a seat on the Odesa City Council and is No. 1 on the Solidarity Party’s election list.
Borovik and Gaidar are appointed advisers to Odesa Oblast Governor Mikheil Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia who was chosen to head the Black Sea oblast by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on May 30.
If she wins, Gaidar, the daughter of the former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar, will use her new position to help push through Saakashvili’s reform program in the oblast, her press secretary Victoriya Sibil told the Kyiv Post on Sept. 24.
“Maria has been working in Odesa Administration solving various problems. Later it became clear that the implementation of reforms might be easier if we could do them via the legislative branch,” Sibil said.
“The chances (of Gaidar) being elected are quite high, because people in Odesa are politically active and don’t sell their votes for a bag buckwheat,” she said, referring to last July’s parliamentary by-election in Chernihiv, during which voters were allegedly offered buckwheat and other incentives to vote for certain parties.
To be elected Odesa mayor, Borovik should present himself as a key ally of Saakashvili, the oblast governor, Volodymyr Fesenko, the head of the Penta Center of Applied Political Research, told the Kyiv Post.
“Borovik could get through to the second round (of voting) comfortably if he links himself to Saakashvili,” Fesenko said. “If he doesn’t, his chances are poor. The current mayor of Odesa, Gennadiy Trukhanov, is still the favorite.”
But Borovik thinks he has a good chance of unseating Trukhanov, saying that Odeas’s voters will respond to his openness and modern campaigning style.
“Trukhanow has high poll numbers, but nobody in Odesa before has been an open politician, who has run modern election campaign,” Borovyk told the Kyiv Post. “You have to go up to people, talk to students, grannies, and hold debates with other politicians. You wear jeans, you roll up your sleeves.”
Borovik said five or six weeks of campaigning, securing a 10-15 percent greater turnout of young voters, would be enough to guarantee his victory. “I’d never run for election if I didn’t feel I could win,” he said. “I aim to reform everything I see.”
Neither Gaidar nor Borovik gave a clear answer as to how they would combine their reform work with Saakashvili’s team and their prospective new positions, saying only that nothing would prevent them cooperating with the Odeas governor. Borovik, who is also promoting Odesa’s reform program as a model for reform nationwide, will also have to spend some time in Kyiv working on that.
Before becoming Saakashvili’s reform adviser, Borovik worked as a deputy minister of economic development and trade. He was dismissed on May 15 after a disagreement with Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
Gaidar obtained Ukrainian citizenship in August 2015, following her appointment by Saakashvili as deputy governor on July 17. She has promised to relinquish her Russian citizenship.
Kyiv Post writer Denys Krasnikov can be reached at [email protected]
