Vitali Klitschko went into the politics on the banner of bringing a new generation of politicians to power.
But the task seems to be difficult for the world heavyweight boxing champion.
His party, UDAR, is supporting several individuals who hardly qualify as fresh faces.
Earlier this month, in a bid to transparency, Klitschko made public a list of party candidates for the single-mandate elections in the Oct. 28 parliamentary elections.
“We want new politicians to come to power,” said Klitschko on May 25. “We are different. We were not in power. Many politicians have already been in the opposition and in power, but have not delivered on their promises. Unfortunately, in Ukrainian politics, there seems to be rotation, but nothing changes.”
But at least three of UDAR’s candidates are recycled politicians from other parties.
For instance, Kyrylo Kulykov came into parliament on the list of imprisoned ex-Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko’s Self-Defense Party in 2007. He is one of the candidates on Klitschko’s list.
Before Lutsenko was arrested in December 2010, Kulykov left the party to join the United Center Party, chaired by Viktor Baloha, former chief of staff to President Viktor Yushchenko.
Kulykov also supported the president’s choice of Viktor Pshonka as general prosecutor.
Pshonka is a target of opposition politicians for allegedly persecuting the president’s enemies, Tymoshenko and Lutsenko among them.
Another person who does not fit the description of “fresh face” is Ivan Plachkov, who served as energy minister during the presidencies of Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yushchenko.
He was also part of the Yushchenko team that brought in RusUkrEnergo, co-owned by Dmytro Firtash and Gazprom, as the key intermediary in the gas trade between Russia and Ukraine in 2006.
In 2008, Plachkov was elected deputy in the Kyiv city council on the UDAR party list, but at the beginning of 2012 left the council to head Kyivenergo, an electricity generating company which was recently privatized by billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, one of Yanukovych’s top backers.
Plachkov currently works for Akhmetov and might run for parliament under the Klitschko’s UDAR party banner.
Yet another new UDAR member – Yevhen Filindash – is a fairly young (35 years old) but experienced politician who spent most of his political career in Oleksandr Moroz’s Socialist Party of Ukraine.
The party did not make it into parliament in 2007.
Moroz switched sides to join the Party of Regions in a coalition, a move that Moroz supporters saw as a betrayal.
Filindash said he joined Klitschko’s party as he believes its members are committed to fighting corruption. “If we want to pull Ukraine out of the abyss, we must not talk about ideological differences, but about what unites us,” he wrote on July 16.
The UDAR party did not respond to emailed questions.
Tymoshenko’s party has also been a target of criticism for their selection of candidates. Earlier this month, Batkivshchyna was accused of nepotism after making public the names of 52 people on its party list.
The candidates include Tymoshenko’s aunt Antonina Ulyakhina, who is not otherwise well-known.
Oleksandr Turchynov, first deputy head of Batkivshchyna party, did not respond to emailed questions.
Nonetheless, the opposition parties win praise for opening the party lists to the general public – something the ruling pro-presidential Party of Regions has refused to do.
“This will be a litmus test of how a party that calls itself opposition reacts to criticism,” said political analyst Oleksiy Haran. “And analysts will see how the politicians’ words match their party lists.”
Klitschko’s party is the second most popular opposition party, after Batkivshchyna, which is led by Tymoshenko.
According to a June poll jointly conducted by the Razumkov Center and Democratic Initiatives Foundation, the party is on target to get 10 percent of the votes – safely above the 5 percent threshold for getting seats in parliament.
Half of the 450-member parliament will be proportionately chosen by party lists while the other half will be picked from a field of candidates running in 225 geographic districts.
Kyiv Post staff writer Yuriy Onyshkiv can be reach at [email protected]
