Editor’s note: As part of its Election Watch project, the Kyiv Post publishes stories covering the elections in Ukraine’s regions. The stories are submitted by local Ukrainian journalists and translated by the Kyiv Post. The project is supported by the National Endowment for Democracy. The donor has no influence on the content.
According to the results of the July 21 snap elections to Ukraine’s parliament, Verkhovna Rada, the presidential Servant of the People party which came out as the absolute winner in five electoral districts of Kherson Oblast. The party garnered the support of 49.7 percent of voters.
The Opposition Platform – For Life was the runner up, securing 17.9 percent of the votes. European Solidarity, the party of the former President Petro Poroshenko, won the support of 6 percent of the voters in Kherson region. The Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party led by Yuliya Tymoshenko garnered 5.3 percent of the votes. Other political forces got less than 4 percent.
Winners in single-mandate constituencies
The presidential Servant of the People party also managed to bring to parliament four single-constituency candidates in Kherson Oblast. Pavlo Pavlish (38.8 percent of votes) got elected in District 182. Viktoriya Vaghner (39.3 percent) won in District 183. Volodymyr Ivanov (31.2 percent) will represent District 185 of Kherson Oblast, and Oleksiy Kovalyov (35.2 percent) won in District 186.
Ihor Kolykhayev was the only candidate who won against a representative of the Servant of the People party. Kolykhayev won support of 44.5 percent of the voters in his district, whereas Danylo Repylevsky, a representative of Servant of the People, got a little more than 32 percent. District 184 was the only one where forecasting the results was difficult.
Another representative of Kherson Olast in the Verkhovna Rada will be Roman Kostenko – a former Security Service of Ukraine officer with experience of serving in the Security Service’s special operations unit Alfa, and war experience gathered in the Antiterrorist operation in the country’s east. Kostenko is number 14 on the list of the Voice party.
‘People have voted for the Servant of the People party brand’
According to Vyacheslav Husakov, a civic ombudsman for electoral rights in Kherson Oblast working for Opora election watchdog, among other things the voters supported the Servant of the People party due to unfulfilled expectations placed in previous politicians.
“Notwithstanding some minor violations, the elections in Kherson region took place in accordance with the principle of competitiveness. The candidates of various parties and self-nominees competed spending large sums of money for the campaign, there were cases of bribing voters, organizing entertainment for voters, but all to no avail. People voted for the Servant of the People brand and supported the candidates who used to be little known in Kherson Oblast,” Husakov told the Kyiv Post.
Only District 184 can be considered an exception, where Ihor Kolykhayev has invested a lot of resources during the previous several years. His projects included support in renovation of a park in Nova Kahovka, supporting hospitals, educational institutions, sports.
Notwithstanding the support of the Servant of the People party, none of the candidates of the presidential political force has secured a “golden share” of more than 50 percent of the votes, Vyacheslav Husakov noticed.
Husakov is sure that “the nominees of the Servant of the People will have a hard time in the new parliament because high expectations are connected with this party. But if we look into their programs, we will see a lot of populistic slogans about the good prevailing over the evil. Or, as was the case of Pavlo Pavlish’ program, promises to resolve local problems, which belong to the jurisdiction of local authorities.”
What we know about winners in single-mandate constituencies
Nineteen candidates ran for parliament in the most populous electoral District 182 with its center in the city of Kherson. Pavlo Pavlish faced competition of Oleksandr Spivakovsky – a self-nominee and incumbent member of parliament on the list of Solidarnist party, Volodymyr Saldo – ex-mayor of Kherson and former member of parliament on the list of the Party of Regions, who currently represents Opposition Platform For Life, Vasyl Fedin – director or Kherson Shipbuilding Plant and member of the local oblast council nominated by the Opposition Bloc, as well as political newcomer Pavlo Biletskiy – a nominee of Voice party, who is known in Kherson as a representative of tourism industry.
As a result, these candidates garnered most of the votes. Saldo (16 percent) secured the second place with a large margin, Fedin (9.2 percent) came third, and Biletskiy (8.2 percent) was the fourth.
The winning candidate, Pavlo Pavlish, is a lawyer. He manages his own law firm called Pravochyn and teaches in the local agrarian university. In 2015, Pavlish ran for the Kherson city council on the list of Petro Poroshenko Bloc.
Pavlish did not run a loud campaign. The candidate participated in debates against Vasyl Fedin, in which he looked less convincing then his opponent. Pavlish used the symbols of Servant of the People actively and appealed to the fact that the president supports him. He promised to solve traditional problems of Kherson connected to bad roads, city transport, poor condition of housing and the like.
In District 183 Viktoriya Vaghner, a Servant of the People candidate, coupled her own authority in the region with that of the party. Vaghner is in charge of a hospital, which welcomes among its patients the military, who participated in the war raging in the east of Ukraine. The hospital has created conditions for curing and rehabilitating the wounded.
Representatives of the “old school” dominated among Vaghner’s competitors in the district. Mykhailo Opanashchenko (14 percent) came second. He is a representative of the Opposition Platform For Life and former member of parliament on the list of the Party of Regions. Yuriy Kyrylov (9.2 percent), nominated by the European Solidarity, came third. And Yuriy Odarchenko (7.3 percent), incumbent member of parliament and representative of Batkivshchyna, came fourth.
Vaghner does not carry any negative background. People learned about her in Kherson back in 2014. Her husband, Vladyslav Kovalyov, who also was a doctor, joined “Kherson” battalion as one of the first volunteers, and went into war action in Donbas. Several days after leaving for war, Vladyslav Kovalyov was killed in action in the city of Ilovaysk.
Before the elections Vaghner promised to track the progress of medical reform in Kherson region, fight raging waste landfills, contribute to development of mortgage programs for the young people, and support young entrepreneurs.
Ihor Kolykhayev, a self-nominee, won in District 184 with the center in the town of Nova Kahovka. In accordance with the official information Kolykhayev manages three companies, namely Lanapodove-1 LLC, the Ukrainian Foodstuffs Corporation LLC, and Prodexim Trading House LLC.
Kolykhayev is in the business of agricultural and oil products sales. His enterprises are big taxpayers. Besides, Kolykhayev is a member of Kherson Oblast council on the list of Solidarity faction.
Kolykhayev also chairs a charity fund bearing his own name. He has supported a number of social and sports projects through the fund, and acted as a philanthropist of many projects in District 184, including those involving public private partnerships.
“Obtaining the priority development status for the oblast, bringing the region up from the status of promising to that of a developed one, establishing a state program for development of villages and farms, founding a regional investment agency for attracting additional financing, developing laws on creation of jobs in rural areas, and increasing rent payments for land plots,” reads Kolykhayev’s election program.
Voldymyr Ivanov won in District 185, in the south of Kherson Oblast. There is not much information about him beyond the official data. His victory was proof of the power of the Servant of the People party brand, which played a key role in forming the voters’ tastes. Ivanov built his campaign relying totally on the party rhetoric and symbols. Prior to the elections people knew little about Ivanov in the district.
Ivanov’s major competitor was Kherson Oblast council member Pavlo Filipchuk (22 percent). Filipchuk was nominated by the Opposition Platform For Life. Serhiy Khlan (16 percent), incumbent member of parliament on the ballot of Solidarnist party, was also a strong competitor.
Prior to 2017, Ivanov was a founder and director of the construction company called Kyivnovbud LLC. In the state register of court cases Kyivnovbud features in several claims submitted by unhappy clients.
In his program Ivanov promised “to take reforms in agriculture under my personal control. I will be convincing the government and all branches of power to improve social protection of the population, increasing and simplifying payments at birth, introducing accessible and understandable real estate mortgage programs.”
Oleksiy Kovalyov won the parliamentary mandate in District 186 of Kherson Oblast (Oleshkivskiy, Holoprystansky, Skadovsky, Kalanchatsky rayons). Kovalyov is a lawyer by education, and a director and founder of Kherson Agrarians LLC. He also manages the private enterprise called Arkada-Yuhstroy.
Kovalyov competed against Yevhen Ryshchuk, a member of Kherson Oblast council and former deputy governor of Kherson Oblast. Ryshchuk was accused of being involved in organization of the attack on local activist Kateryna Handzyuk, who died on Nov. 4, 2018. Ryshchuk denies the accusations.
Despite the active campaign, Ryshchuk failed to create real competition against the presidential party candidate and he came third with 17 percent of the votes. Serhiy Rybalko, a candidate of the Opposition Platform For Life, garnered 1 percent more votes.
During his campaign Kovalyov promised to develop laws in the agricultural and tax sectors. He also criticized medical reform and promised to relaunch it. In his program Kovalyov promised to “introduce draft laws, which would rid the country of disastrous waste landfills. I will work towards securing government support for repairing rural roads. 1I will try to resolve the issues of energy sufficiency and quality infrastructure – both in urban, and in rural areas.”
Translation by Vyacheslav Hnatyuk.
