While the EuroMaidan Revolution that ousted President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 brought dozens of young activists into politics, injecting much-needed fresh blood, none of them appear to have a shot at becoming Ukraine’s next president.
Judging from the polls, this leaves most Ukrainians highly frustrated: They want new faces, but see no one so far to rally around.
This leaves the danger that, come March, Ukrainians will be choosing the next president among the same old field of candidates that has dominated political life since the 1990s — most of whom have been discredited many times over. They may even get a rematch of the 2014 contest of Petro Poroshenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, a prospect that brings dread to many voters.
A May poll by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation and Razumkov Center found that 62 percent of Ukrainians want to see new political leaders. But no new leaders are polling well. Based on May standings, Tymoshenko — a two-time prime minister — and former Defense Minister Anatoly Grytsenko are topping the field.
They are followed by Oleh Lyashko, who has been elected to parliament four times; Yuriy Boiko, who served as vice prime minister and three times was the minister of energy; and the incumbent Poroshenko, according to the same poll.
But the truth is, none is really popular: even the leader, Tymoshenko, polls at 16 percent or even lower, depending on the poll.
This leaves the field open for the right new face. Almost 6 percent of Ukrainians said they would vote against all of the suggested candidates and 29 percent of respondents haven’t decided whom they will support, according to the poll the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.
A poll conducted by GFK research group in June-July showed that none of the politicians had the rating of more than 10 percent and 19 percent of Ukrainians didn’t want to participate in the presidential elections at all. Out of them, 45 percent explained that they didn’t see a decent candidate to vote for, and 33 percent said they didn’t believe their votes could make a difference.
Experts estimate it will take at least another five years for a new generation of politicians to mature enough to run for the presidency. Moreover, they say, the leading young politicians lack unity and persistence.
It’s too soon after the revolution, said Mykhailo Minakov, a principal investigator on Ukraine at the Kennan Institute.
Post-Maidan politicians blame wealthy, media-holding oligarchs for blocking access to new faces.
“Oligarchs and their representatives fight for power with big enthusiasm. They invest big resources, technologies to keep the power,” said Iegor Soboliev, a lawmaker with the 25-member opposition Samopomich Party. “But people with decency and principles are only learning how to rule the country.”
Radical Party leader Oleg Lyashko, head of a 21-member faction in parliament, kisses a cow next to the building of Cabinet of Ministers in Kyiv on April 8, 2016. Lyashko ran for president in 2014 and got 8.3 percent of votes, coming third after President Petro Poroshenko and ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Today, he is polling at 5 percent, according to the poll by GfK Ukraine research company published in July. (UNIAN)
No consensus candidate
Soboliev left journalism for politics in 2013 and created the Volia political party. During the EuroMaidan Revolution, he coordinated the student protest movement. In parliament, he chaired the anti-corruption committee before being removed in December 2017. He is a fierce critic of Poroshenko.
Soboliev, along with Sergii Leshchenko, Mustafa Nayem and Svitlana Zalishchuk and several others belong to a new political generation, who came from journalism or civic activism and whom political consultant Volodymyr Fesenko calls the “European romantics.”
Fesenko, who has worked as a consultant for various politicians from the “old” camp, said that these representatives of the new generation in politics lack leadership, including the hard and persistent work to create their own teams, find resources and mobilize supporters. Unless they rise in stature, they will remain political activists, he believes.
“It looks like they shy away from the routine political work,” Fesenko said. “Moreover, leadership is a real talent which very few people have.”
Business politicians
Fesenko said the top politicians including Poroshenko and Tymoshenko belong to the generation of “business politicians,” which has dominated Ukraine over the last 15 years. They came into politics as early as the mid-1990s, during the creation of Ukraine’s oligarchy.
“They combine political activity and business,” he said. “They control the resources and set the trends in Ukraine’s politics.”
Despite Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman and his predecessor, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, leader of the People’s Front party, being closer in age to post-Maidan politicians, they belong “by habits and mentality” to the generation of the business politicians, Fesenko said.
Even in the new generation, there are some business politicians, “who earn on politics and use business for political purposes.” He puts in this group Oles Dovhy, lawmaker from People’s Will (Volia Narodu) parliament faction; Serhiy Berezenko, a lawmaker from the dominant 136-member Petro Poroshenko Bloc and Anton Herashchenko, a lawmaker from the 81-member People’s Front faction.
Petro Poroshenko, then a lawmaker with President Viktor Yushchenko’s Nasha Ukraina (Our Ukraine) party, and Yulia Tymoshenko, leader of the BYuT (Batkivshchyna) party, talk during a parliament session on June 7, 2006. The former allies are about to run against each other, for the second time, in the March 2019 presidential election. (UNIAN)
TV rules
Sociologist Iryna Bekeshkina, head of the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, said it is hard for new politicians to get national popularity without access to television, which remains the main source of news for the majority of Ukrainians.
“If you are not on TV then you don’t exist,” she said.
Oligarchs, who own most of Ukraine’s TV channels, are not interested in promoting the “new Macron,” she added, referring to French President Emmanuel Macron, who was a newcomer to politics when he won the elections in 2017.
Bekeshkina attributes to TV the popularity of a rock singer Sviatoslav Vakarchuk and comic showman Volodymyr Zelensky, who, despite only being rumored to enter the presidential elections, poll at about 4 percent or more. Vakarchuk, Zelensky and lawmaker and owner of News One TV channel Yevhen Murayev were named as the potential new political leaders in Bekeshkina’s recent poll.
Bekeshkina added that many new politicians made it to parliament in 2014 thanks to political TV talk shows, which were common in Ukraine back then but have now disappeared from the major TV channels.
Last shot for old guards
Bekeshkina believes that while it’s too late for the new leaders to get known enough to win the presidential elections in March, there is still time for the new politicians to get seats in parliament following the parliamentary elections in October.
Minakov from the Kennan Institute said the current demand for new leaders is widely abused by spin doctors of the old politicians. Tymoshenko has already started her campaign trying to project a new image and promotion of changes to the Constitution, which she called the “new social contract.”
“So, the old wine will be ‘sold’ to us in new bottles,” Minakov said.
Fesenko said the 2019 presidential campaign will be the last one dominated by the generation of business politicians. In about 5–10 years, the political generations will inevitably change.
“We haven’t got Ukrainian Macron yet,” the political consultant said. “But I think we are close to it.”
