DNIPRO, Ukraine — March 26 was a workday, but hundreds of people lined up in front of the Dnipro Arena football stadium starting at 3 p. m. The diverse public of all ages — students, parents with young kids, the elderly — came to see the new comedy show, Vecherniy Kvartal, starring Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the front-runner for Ukrainian presidency.
While other candidates have been touring the country with campaign rallies and appearances at public events, Zelenskiy went on a short tour with his comedy show to eight cities in central and eastern Ukraine, where he holds the highest electoral rating.
The tour ends on March 29, on the eve of the “silence day” when campaigning is prohibited. The vote will take place on March 31, and according to polls, Zelenskiy will go in the runoff.
Zelenskiy, a native of Kryvyi Rih in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, was greeted as a native son in Dnipro, the provincial capital of 1 million residents located 477 kilometers southeast of Kyiv, on March 26.
The city has given the Ukrainian nation a number of prominent politicians and businessmen: President Leonid Kuchma, presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko, billionaire oligarchs Victor Pinchuk and Ihor Kolomoisky, banker Sergiy Tigipko, to name a few. At least nine presidential candidates out of 39 on the ballot are from Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.
Like in previous tours, Kvartal 95 gave a charity concert in the afternoon and a commercial one for those who purchased tickets in the evening.
While most of the free show was apolitical, the election vibe was in the air. In the beginning, Zelenskiy announced half-jokingly: “No campaigning today.” Yet, there were plenty of allusions.
“Why campaign? You are smart people, you know who to vote for on March 31,” Zelenskiy said calling the public to go to the polling stations.
The lyrics of a song called “Life is beautiful” bore not-so-subtle hint that Ukrainians will live better after the election: “Year 2019, April 1, just imagine and believe that everything you wished for came true.” But Zelenskiy still has two rounds of the election on the way to the presidency.
And in another song, Zelenskiy appealed to the audience: “What kind of world will we leave for our children?” and “Admit to yourself that we came to terms with vote-buying and the rotation of leaders.”
Zelenskiy, the 41-year-old comedic actor and television producer, has built his campaign on anti-elite sentiment. He is younger than his main rivals, Petro Poroshenko and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, and he doesn’t have a trail of corruption scandals and broken promises.
Concert-goers Mykhailo Ostrenko and Yaseniya Yakimenko, both 26 years old, said they would vote for Zelenskiy because they wanted someone new in politics — a phrase repeated by many among his voter base.
“Other candidates have been in politics for a long time,” said Ostrenko. “We are in the 21st century, but other candidates live in the 1990s,” echoed Yakimenko.
Lack of political experience, which Zelenskiy presented as his advantage, doesn’t deter his young voters either. They say he can learn and he will have a team of professionals.
“The most important thing for a president is the attitude to people. Unfortunately, people don’t exist for our (current) politicians.”
While Zelenskiy is an indisputable leader among young voters under 30, he also appeals to so-called protest voters, weary of the long-time ruling elites, and Russian-speaking Ukrainians living in the south and east of the country.
“I’m going to vote for Zelenskiy because I want the youth in power. I’m tired of old men,” said Svetlana Lavrova, 45.
Vote-buying
Zelenskiy scores great in polls but election watchers say that he will face major challenges to protect the voting results amid allegations of massive vote-buying and misuse of administrative resources by other candidates.
Over the course of the election campaign, both law enforcement and investigative journalists have uncovered vote-buying networks and bribery schemes.
Ivan Krasikov, a Dnipro-based journalist and activist, believes that networks are at the center of this year’s election campaign.
“Vote-buying is built on the same principle as network marketing. First, they find one member who will campaign for a certain candidate. Then this person creates a network of his or her relatives and acquaintances who receive money for campaigning,” he said.
Forcing civil servants to vote for a certain candidate is also common, he says. In his words, Dnipro municipal departments were ordered to provide the city council lists of all employees and their relatives. And all municipal companies and public agencies have to provide the city council a list of curators who will be responsible for how their employees vote.
According to the head of the OPORA election watchdog, Olga Aivazovska, over 80 percent of Ukrainian voters believe that the election will be rigged. This is the lowest level of confidence in the fairness of presidential election. The Gallup pollster points that only 12 percent of voters trust that the election will be fair.
In Dnipro, activists have also suspected city authorities of vote-buying. In the midst of the election campaign in late January, the city council allocated an additional Hr 140 million ($5 million) on welfare aid to financially struggling citizens. The increase was almost tenfold from Hr 18 million ($185,000) for the same purpose in 2018.
At the same time, the Dnipro city council simplified the procedure for receiving welfare aid. Instead of a big package of documents proving why someone needed money from the city budget, it was enough to write an application and attach a copy of one’s passport and identification number.
A local anti-corruption movement, People’s Control, launched a flashmob #грошидозарплати (money until salary) explaining how literally any Dnipro citizen could receive up to Hr 3,842 ($141) from the city budget.
Activist Oleksandr Dzyuba wasn’t in financial need but applied for welfare aid for the experiment.
“Crowds of people lined up in front of the city council building. All you had to do was to write a letter about why you needed money. Then a commission decided on the amount of aid,” he told the Kyiv Post.
Dzyuba eventually received a confirmation letter signed by the city mayor Borys Filatov. It said: “Dnipro city authorities care about citizens in difficult straits.”
The number of people willing to receive money was so high — local media reported up to 90,000 people applied for the aid — that the city council urged calling off the simplified procedure and requiring the full package of documents for financial aid again.
On March 27, Nashi Groshi investigative program revealed that social welfare aid budgets were increased in other cities too, such as Odesa, Kyiv, and Kherson.
Denys Davydov, an observer for Dnipro with the OPORA election watchdog, says that while such aid can be justified and there’s no direct violation of the electoral law, it contradicts the spirit of equal opportunities for all candidates.
Filatov vs. Kolomoisky
The sudden generosity of Dnipro city authorities had been attributed to the Mayor Borys Filatov.
Filatov worked with Yulia Tymoshenko in the early days of his career, and then was on the team of oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky during his tenure as governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. But his relationship with the oligarch went sour a few years ago, and today Filatov supports the re-election of President Poroshenko.
Speaking at the forum on Feb. 1 where Poroshenko announced he was running for a second term, Filatov highly praised the president’s decentralization reform, which gave more autonomy to local authorities.
Many believe that oligarch Kolomoisky backs Zelenskiy in a bid to prevent Poroshenko’s re-election. The actor has denied the allegations.
Kolomoisky lives in self-exile in Israel and has promised to come back to Ukraine, where he still owns a vast business, after Poroshenko is out of office. He holds resentment against the incumbent president for the nationalization of his assets, including PrivatBank in 2016. Kolomoisky also claimed that Poroshenko tried to take control of his television channel 1+1.
Filatov is reportedly on a work trip in Japan this week and wasn’t available for comment.
In a February interview to Ukrainian website Liga.net, Filatov said that he supported not Poroshenko personally but his decentralization policy.
He also denied that giving out welfare aid during the election campaign could be counted as vote-buying. “You can understand it differently. We have always given aid. Of course, not to so many people, and not in such amounts.”
