Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, frontman of the popular Ukrainian rock band Okean Elzy, has announced that he will run for the Ukrainian parliament from a newly formed party that he will lead in the upcoming parliamentary election.
The new party is called Holos, meaning both voice and vote in Ukrainian. Vakarchuk took to an outdoor stage in central Kyiv on May 16 in front of a sign reading “I am the voice of change” to make the announcement.
“Today, a new voice has sounded in Ukraine: my voice, your voice,” Vakarchuk said.
Vakarchuk will challenge the old political elite in the Ukrainian parliament, or Verkhovna Rada, that, he said, “has turned into a toxic swamp that serves its own interests and the interests of its wealthy sponsors.”
“We are all tired of how politics is done in Ukraine,” the musician said, appealing to a widely shared sentiment among Ukrainians tired of corruption, the poor economy, and the growing wealth gap. “They promise us mountains of gold and then betrays us again and again in pursuit of their own interests. Oligarchs dictate their decisions.”
In contrast, Holos doesn’t have oligarch backers and puts the interests of Ukraine and its people above all, he said. It will continue Ukraine’s pro-European course and hold the authorities accountable to the public.
Blind faith in the new president is also “old politics,” said the musician, who many expected to run for president earlier this year. Ultimately, he decided not to.
His party, Vakarchuk said, has learned a bitter lesson from the past presidents and, therefore, doesn’t put high hopes in the “new name on Bankova” — President-elect Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who will be sworn-in on May 20.
“If the president proposes changes, we will push for bigger changes. If the president betrays his voters, we will hold him accountable to them,” he said.
Vakarchuk named several people on his campaign team, but said they will not necessarily be on the party ballot of Holos.
They are: Yulia Klymenko, a former deputy economy minister; Solomiia Bobrovska, a former deputy governor of Odesa; Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, the former director of Transparency International Ukraine; Andriy Sharaskin, a Donbas war veteran and defender of the Donetsk airport; and Yuriy Sokolov, a prominent cardiologist.
The newly formed party will hold a convention to announce the list of it candidates who will run for parliament. The convention’s date depends on whether Zelenksiy dissolves the parliament and calls for a snap parliamentary election, Klymenko told the Kyiv Post.
Second time’s a charm?
Vakarchuk will try his chances in the Ukrainian legislature for the second time. In 2007, he served briefly as a lawmaker, elected on the ballot of then-President Victor Yushchenko’s Nasha Ukraina (Our Ukraine) party. The next year, he abruptly quit citing disappointment with internal quarrels.
“Political life in the state has narrowed down to the ruthless fight for power,” he said in September 2008.
Vakarchuk left politics but remained outspoken on political issues in Ukraine. In 2018, his public speeches and statements on reforms, good governance, the electoral process and other matters of state importance prompted rumors — and hopes — that he would run for President of Ukraine in 2019. Before the official start of the campaign, he was viewed as one of the potential candidates in opinion polls and at some point ranked higher than comedic actor Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who eventually was elected president.
Then, after months of lingering intrigue, Vakarchuk announced in January he wasn’t running for the office.
