There have been hints even that Poroshenko might delay the local elections throughout the rest of Ukraine, due on Oct. 25, significantly as his own party is doing dismally now in the polls, with Bloc of Petro Poroshenko down at 11.6% or so, just ahead of Tymoshenko’s Batkivchyna with 11%, while Yatseniuk’s People’s Front is down at 1.1% in the latest KMIS poll – a spectacular collapse from the first spot Yatseniuk got in the November 2014 parliamentary elections.
Yatseniuk would partially counter that this is because his party pulled out of the campaign – and he always sold himself as the kamikaze politician, doing difficult reforms which will kill his popularity. Pro-Reform Samopomich polls at 7.5% ahead of the Opposition Bloc of former Viktor Yanukovych supporters with 6.4%. Oleh Lyashko’s Popular Party gets 4.3%, and the Right Sector 3.8%.
Tymoshenko and Right Sector both appear to be on the up, most of the others on the way down. Tymoshenko is again emerging as a political force to be reckoned with in Ukraine – discount her at your peril!
Suffice to say it will be interesting if Poroshenko tries to delay local elections also until February. This will I guess give him more time to get the difficult constitutional reform legislation through the Verkhovna Rada – that said, at this stage it seems nigh on impossible for a Russia-compliant bill – which would either create a federal system of government in Ukraine or an Autonomous Donetsk Republic-style system, either way with the regions having veto power on national policy orientation – to get approval in parliament.
Even the process of trying to force such legislation through would likely undermine political stability in Kyiv.
From Moscow’s perspective, all scenarios are positive: a) failure to be seen to pass a Minsk-II compliant bill will risk criticism from Western powers, and could then undermine support for sanctions on Russia; b) Passing a Russia compliant bill will satisfy Russia (in terms of stalling Ukraine’s Western orientation), but destabilise politics in Kyiv, and even the process of trying to get it passed is likely to prove destabilising. The latter scenario could yet see the emergence of a new government in Kyiv more compliant to Russian interests.
Many see Tymoshenko as a person with whom Moscow could deal with – remember the 2009 gas price deal?
I guess at this stage all sides have an interest in playing for time. From the Ukrainian perspective, stalling on the political front over constitutional reform gives more time for macrostabilization and for reforms to get embedded. From the Russian perspective, it gives time for domestic Ukrainian politics to unwind. From the West, well they are really just interested in kicking the can down the road, and focusing on the nearer term risks/pressures from Syria, and the Russian intervention therein.
