Pryamii TV host Taras Berezovets wants President Petro Poroshenko to win his re-election bid on April 21.
And he thinks there’s a chance. After all, in an interview with the Kyiv Post, Berezovets noted that Poroshenko’s rating was 5 percent several months ago, when people gave him “no chance to be in the second round.”
He said the president “made a huge and very successful campaign” in recovering on March 31 to win 16 percent of the vote, beating back ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko by less than 3 percentage points, and making it into the decisive round.
Comedic actor Volodymyr Zelenskiy is Poroshenko’s favored opponent, outside of pro-Russian member of parliament Yuriy Boyko, who finished in fourth place.
But Zelenskiy’s margin in the first round — 30 percent to Poroshenko’s 16 percent — presents a huge gap to bridge.
Berezovets said that he supports Poroshenko as the wiser of the two men, and because of his strong pro-European stance. Zelenskiy, by contrast, “is very pro-Russian in his mind.”
The Poroshenko campaign should not become over-confident because of Zelenskiy’s political inexperience, he said.
Poroshenko needs to deploy his full skills as a persuasive speaker “to address voters of those candidates who lost in the first round.”
Instead of trying to get the losing candidates to endorse him, he should strive to win over their followers by identifying and endorsing the best parts of the programs of the fallen rivals.
Poroshenko should address voters of these candidates directly,” Berezovets said, for example saying that he will fulfill certain policies championed by ex-Defense Minister Anatoliy Hrytsenko, another losing candidate.
The president should also woo opinion leaders such as Slava Vakarchuk, the front man of the Okean Elzy rock band.
Moreover, Berezovets advised, Poroshenko should stop depicting Zelenskiy and his voters as “bastards, rascals, cowards” and should make it clear he respects the choices of people.
Additionally, Berezovets said, Poroshenko should make it clear that the second term won’t be a repeat of the first five years.
To signal changes, Berezovets said that the president needs “to fire some government officials, especially in law enforcement — unpopular people — and make popular nominations.”
Berezovets didn’t identify by name those officials, but Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko is among the most unpopular and controversial of Poroshenko’s law enforcement choices.
Finally, and “the most complicated thing for him,” Berezovets conceded, is for Poroshenko to “arrest some corrupted people” to signal that a second-term presidency “will be completely different and the president is changing” and will fight corruption.
Berezovets was a deputy campaign manager in 2014 for Tymoshenko before switching alliances.
He thinks she no longer has a bright political future outside of leading a faction in parliament that is likely to gain no more than 30 seats in parliament in the October elections.
“She was completely outdated,” Berezovets said of her inability to win the presidency after three tries.
He believes the next two weeks will be “very dirty” in terms of campaigning, with “every possible scandal” coming out, which will come as no surprise.
And he said that Poroshenko is certain about winning.
“He is confident that he can make it. He thinks he has enough time and resources,” Berezovets said. “He believes he can win.”
But, Berezovets said, Poroshenko could be hindered simply by the reluctance of Ukrainian voters to re-elect the same person — they’ve only done it once in history, and that was Leonid Kuchma in 1999.
If Zelenskiy does win, he said, it will give more impetus among lawmakers for reducing the powers of the president and making Ukraine a true parliamentary republic, something that Tymoshenko also championed during her campaign.
He said that Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman will likely emerge as the big winner if Zelenskiy wins because he will likely stay in the post until the fall parliamentary elections.
