Victor Yanukovych and Yulia Tymoshenko are most likely to get into the second round, while support for Arseniy Yatseniuk is dwindling fast.
Five months ago, it looked like Ukraine’s presidential contest was wide open. It appeared that a fresh-faced candidate in ex-Verkhovna Rada speaker Arseniy Yatseniuk had a strong shot at the country’s top job. Polls showed that voters were increasingly tired of the three politicians who have dominated Ukrainian politics since the 2004 Orange Revolution, namely erstwhile allies President Victor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, as well as their Orange Revolution foe, Victor Yanukovych.
But with less than three months left before the Jan. 17 election, Yatseniuk appears to be fading away fast, leaving Yanukovych, the loser of the 2004 presidential contest, and Tymoshenko as the clear leaders.
“It became clear – in the last month or so – that Yanukovych and Tymoshenko are now the front-runners in the campaign,” said Volodymyr Fesenko, head of Penta, a political consultancy.
With popularity ratings several fold higher than other candidates, the duo is set to muster the highest amount of support in the January vote – and to square off for the presidency in a second-round runoff that will be held in early February.
In the most recent monthly poll conducted by TNS in the first half of October, Tymoshenko’s voter support surged by a whopping 7 percent in month-on-month terms, reaching nearly 18 percent. Yanukovych jumped four percent points, with 23 percent of Ukrainians ready to vote for him in the first round.
Another poll, conducted by the Kyiv Institute of Sociology on Oct. 6-23, showed a similar picture: Yanukovych would get 27 percent of support if the vote was held this month, while Tymoshenko would collect about 17 percent of votes.
It appears much of Tymoshenko’s gains came at the expense of Yatseniuk, who lost 4.6 percentage points compared to TNS’s August survey. In October, only 6.5 percent of Ukrainians were ready to cast their votes for him in January. It’s a sharp drop from just a few months ago, when he was within striking distance of the runoff and just behind Tymoshenko in the 12 to 15 percent range.
Both new polls show that support for Yushchenko hovers around 3 percent, close to the surveys’ error margins. Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko mustered the same as banker Sergiy Tigipko, 2.67 percent, in the TNS poll. Parliament speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn’s support stood at 1.75 percent. Former defense minister Anatoliy Hrytsenko is supported by 1.25 percent. Nearly 20 percent of voters surveyed were undecided, 10 percent said they would vote against all, while 8.5 percent said they would not vote at all, according to the nationwide TNS poll conducted among 1,200 Ukrainians.
Kingmakers
But don’t rule out Yatseniuk and other second-tier candidates just yet. Ukrainian elections are notorious for surprises and strange twists, bizarre alliances and multi-move strategies.
Political analysts say that the horse-trading for support in the runoff has already kicked off. Some minor candidates are demanding the prime minister’s job in return for their backing. Others could seek a snap parliamentary election. They “will now set their sights on getting the strongest possible result, giving them more bargaining power in negotiations for their backing during the runoff,” said Fesenko.
The big question now is which one of the two front-runners – Yanukovych or Tymoshenko – are key second-tier candidates likely to side with in a runoff? Analysts have strong guesses of how things could play out.
Tymoshenko played a big role in rallying voter support for Yushchenko in 2004, but analysts say relations between both have since spoiled so much, that he is unlikely to back her candidacy. In fact, many of Yushchenko’s actions indicate he’s trying to sabotage Tymoshenko’s performance as prime minister to reduce her chances of winning.
The most recent example is Yushchenko’s unwillingness to veto a populist increase of the minimum wage approved by parliament on Oct. 19 that would require additional expenses of $10 billion next year, busting the budget. This law puts into question the next tranche of the International Monetary Fund due later this year, and the government’s ability to pay wages and salaries on time.
However, Yushchenko is unlikely to get any extra votes from Tymoshenko, while she could still pick up a percentage point or two from the strongly anti-Yanukovych voter base that has stuck with Yushchenko since 2004.
Lytvyn could support the candidate in the second round that provides guarantees for him to remain parliament speaker. Symonenko’s voter base, largely a Russian-speaking one from eastern and southern Ukraine, is likely to lean towards Yanukovych in a runoff. But in the first round, his candidacy is handy for Tymoshenko because it takes chunks of votes that would otherwise benefit her main rival, said Vadym Karasyov, an analyst at the institute of Global Strategies. Same goes for the support base of Inna Bohoslovska who is campaigning heavily in Crimea, southern and eastern regions. They give Yanukovych ‘psychological discomfort,” Karasyov said.
Analysts say an alliance between Tymoshenko and Tigipko would be a friendly one. Tigipko is eyeing the premiership and is likely to seek her support. But she might have other plans in mind: Some politicians started speculating that Tymoshenko might attempt to concentrate maximum power in her hands. Mykhailo Brodsky, her former ally, speculated in a recent interview on Ukrainska Pravda online newspaper, that Tymoshenko would like to see her right-hand man, Oleksandr Turchynov, as prime minister.
But ultimately, it’s up to parliament to form a coalition government. With his Regions Party standing strong in parliament, Yanukovych is likely to seek the premier job, either by forming a coalition with Tymoshenko’s BYuT bloc or others, should she win the presidency. Likewise, Tymoshenko, also with a strong party presence in parliament as backing, will seek to hold on to the premiership if she loses the presidential contest. Many observers believe Yanukovych and Tymoshenko have already struck a power-sharing agreement which envisions them splitting the presidency and prime minister jobs. As the theory goes, the presidential elections are being played out to decide who gets what job.
It’s unclear how stable a Yanukovych-Tymoshenko power-sharing pact would be. But much less clear is who Yatseniuk would side with in the runoff. Analysts say he could seek the premier job, but he also strongly seeks snap parliamentary elections, a scenario that could allow his political bloc to gain a strong presence and base of support in parliament.
“If Yatseniuk want to make further progress as a politician, he has to transform his current ratings to real result” either in parliament or as prime minister, “otherwise, voters will soon forget about him,” said Taras Berezovets, a political advisor within Tymoshenko’s camp.
“Yatseniuk will agree to support one of second round candidates only if one of them signs a written agreement to dissolve parliament after winning the presidency,” Berezovets added.
But snap parliamentary elections could play strongly against the interests of both Yanukovych and Tymoshenko, as their parties could lose their strong grip over parliament. With such tough demands, negotiations between Yatseniuk and the two front-runners are expected to be tough.
