DNIPROPETROVSK AND ZAPORIZHYA OBLASTS, Ukraine -- Petro Poroshenko no longer campaigns merely to be elected Ukraine’s next president. With every poll placing him firmly in the lead, he is now asking people across the country to elect him in the first round on May 25.
“Just imagine, you can have a chief commander on May 26, that’s just a week from now,” he told a crowd of several thousand supporters at a rally in Zaporizhya on May 18. He asked to tell their friends and families to show up at the polls and support him as well.
He explains that if he gets less than 50 percent of vote required for his early victory, there will be weeks of waiting to contain the trouble in the country’s east, millions of much-needed hryvnias will be spent from the budget, and Ukrainians will have to endure three more weeks of infighting between the candidates.
The alternative, he says, is more attractive: a president who will make the country more secure and bring prosperity to the nation using his massive political and business experience. Or, as his campaign slogan goes, To Live The New Way.
While traveling the country’s south and east, 48-year-old Poroshenko says he will act decisively to contain the spread of Russian-backed separatism.
“What language do we have to speak with terrorists? That’s right, the language of force. The state has to learn to speak the language of force,” he told a rally in Kryvyi Rih on May 17.
Then, he will proceed to win over people’s minds.
“The key fight that there has to happen to get Crimea back, as well as in the fight for Donbas is the fight for the minds,” he told another rally in Dnipropetrovsk.
Asked what it would bring for the family, the said “I am afraid to even think about it.”
Despite the general fatigue with politicians, his messages were received well by the people. “This guy says the right things. What do people need? they need jobs, they need to work and they need to be protected,” said Mykhailo Buchenkov, an entrepreneur who came to a rally in Dniprodzerzhynsk.
He said that even in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, home to two other challengers Yulia Tymoshenko and Sergiy Tigipko, people opt for Poroshenko. “Yulia (Tymoshenko) is not even liked here by her own folks — she does not fulfill her promises,” Buchenkov said.
Poroshenko will have a lot of promises to fulfill, as well.
Quite frequently, he tells the crowds that his top priority is European integration for Ukraine, and that he plans to sign the business part of the association agreement with the European Union next month if he gets a chance. He said implementation of the EU deal will help Ukraine create a more efficient economy, fight corruption and build an independent judiciary system, among other benefits.
“My presidential program is the association agreement,” he told a rally in Kryvyi Rih.
He also says that he will appoint a deputy prime minister for European integration, and make sure there is an official in every ministry to coordinate implementation of the agreements with the West, which requires a lot of inter-agency cooperation.
His other big promise is new jobs and a more competitive economy and help improve the business climate. “I know how to help, I know how to protect a person who has decided to start a business,” he says.
Poroshenko himself is a business tycoon with a massive chocolate empire, as well as interests in automobile and shipbuilding industries. In 2013, Forbes estimated his fortune at $1.6 billion.
But he vows to sell all his businesses after election, except for Channel 5, a television station that he says has done a great public service by giving “fair coverage” to both of Ukraine’s revolutions that have taken place in the past decade.
Poroshenko frequently boasts of his achievements in business, saying that an average worker receives Hr 7,000 in wages per month. An average wave across Ukraine is less than half of that. He says his employees also get free medical insurance and free meals as a part of corporate social responsibility program.
“If we did this for a team of 25,000 people, why can’t we do it for 45 million?” he tells the crowd.
It’s not yet clear who exactly will do it.
Over two decades, Poroshenko has changed many political camps. He has worked with pro-Russian hardliner Viktor Medvedchuk, founded the Party of Regions, ran several key agencies in President Viktor Yushchenko’s government, and then worked as economy minister in fugitive President Viktor Yanukovych’s government. But despite that, Poroshenko’s team is not easy to pin down.
His campaign relies heavily on Vitali Klitschko’s UDAR party, as well as former supporters of Tymoshenko, his bitter rival since Yushchenko’s presidency, when the duo traded accusations of corruption. Some of his staff worked for the notoriously corrupt Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chernovetskiy.
Foreign relations with Russia moreover will be further complicated by the $72 million in assets that a Russian bank has frozen of his Roshen chocolate-making company.
But Yuriy Lutsenko, a former minister and political prisoner who campaigns on behalf of Poroshenko, says he is still the best bet.
“I dont know a single angel in Ukraine’s politics… But there are those who talk and those who build. I think the time has come to elect someone who builds,” he said at one rally.
Poroshenko has indicated that he will keep Arseniy Yatseniuk as prime minister, and Deputy Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman will continue to be in charge of administrative reform. The rest of the Cabinet needs “radical” change, Poroshenko said, but the appointments will not be based on party basis.
“There will be no party quotas, there will be no trade in jobs, Poroshenko said. “Their level of competence will be absolutely adequate.”
Poroshenko promised to name all his government candidates immediately after the inauguration, but also said that early parliamentary elections are needed to push through real change.
Kyiv Post deputy chief editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at [email protected]
