The upcoming local elections set for Oct. 25 may seem less important than the presidential and parliamentary races, but they are widely considered as the most important local elections Ukraine has ever held.
These elections will be conducted under new electoral and land codes, while those chosen will hold more powers than the outgoing regional politicians because of the ongoing decentralization reform.
However, in Ukraine’s five largest cities — Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Dnipro and Lviv — incumbent mayors are expected to be re-elected and increase their influence in the city councils.
These elections are also expected to become the first major political defeat for President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose Servant of the People party is expected to lose elections in all major cities.
With the financial independence of local communities increasing, the president is looking at a potential situation where regional powerbrokers have more financial and political independence from the center and have a strong dislike toward the president and his governing party.
Electing all
The upcoming election will be a massive reshuffle on the local level with all seats up for the taking.
Voters will elect heads of all villages and cities under the control of the Ukrainian government and will choose members of most hromadas — a new administrative unit of united smaller villages — and city councils, as well as the members of most district and regional councils.
In total, that amounts to more than 3,000 separate races. Ukrainians will elect 370 mayors and over 1,000 village and town heads, as well as some 2,000 different councils — in cities, oblasts, villages and hromadas.
Oblast councils will be elected in 22 out of 24 regions — with the notable exception of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, which are partially occupied by the Russian-led militants.
There are nearly 27 million registered voters, yet the total turnout is expected to be between 10–15 million people.
Elections in Crimea and the Russian-occupied Donbas won’t be held on Oct. 25.
Opposition on the rise
The new electoral code dismantled the single-member constituencies and independent nominations for territories with over 10,000 voters. Now, each candidate must be backed by a registered political party.
The opposition parties came prepared.
A total of 360 parties are running in at least one election. Most parties were created to support a single candidate such as a city mayor or a potential city council official. Many parties bear the name of their frontrunner.
According to Chesno, an independent election watchdog, only twelve parties are running in multiple regions and have the potential to attract over 1% of the total vote share.
The aggregated poll of Rating Group shows that the governing Servant of the People party, which a year prior won 54% of the total vote on the national level, is expected to receive only 16.7% of the vote around the country.
The pro-Russian Opposition Platform — For Life party is expected to receive 13.5% of the vote, while the European Solidarity party led by ex-President Petro Poroshenko is looking to receive 13.2%.
The Batkivshchyna party led by ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and the newly created For the Future party associated with oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky are expected to receive over 5 percent of the total vote.
Additionally, the elections will be held under the open proportional representation system, meaning that the voter will vote for the party and the preferred candidate from that party.
The party needs to pass the 5% threshold to make it into the council. For a preferred candidate to be chosen, he needs to be supported by over 25% of those who voted for the party. If this criterion isn’t met, the candidate on top of the party list will make it into the council, making the open party list useless.
For cities with over 75,000 people, a two-round election has been introduced. If none of the candidates for mayor receives over 50% of the vote a run-off between the top two candidates will take place on Nov. 15.
In all Ukrainian cities with over 500,000 residents, mayoral candidates from Zelensky’s Servant of the People party are expected to lose.
Decentralization
These elections are crucial because of the growing powers that the victors will receive. In Ukraine’s five largest cities, incumbent mayors are expected to be re-elected. All of them oppose the president.
Starting in 2015, the parliament amended the budget code and the tax code, granting regions more financial independence. Cities and hromadas now keep 100% of the city’s property taxes and low-rate income tax for businesses. Hromadas also keep 60% of income taxes, something that only regional capitals enjoyed in the past.
As a result, the cumulative income of Ukrainian regional budgets increased from Hr 68.6 billion ($5.5 billion) in 2014 to Hr 267 billion ($10.2 billion) in 2019, despite the massive currency devaluation and economic crisis which followed the EuroMaidan Revolution and Russia’s invasion in 2014.
Further decentralization is set to give local communities more say over education, health care, urban planning, foreign direct investment and local economic development.
As a result, over 50 lawmakers are running in the upcoming local elections either in the mayor’s race or as leaders of their party’s city council bids.
However, most of them are doing this to increase their party’s recognition among the local electorate and won’t take the job if elected. Instead, another person from their party list will take their local seat.
