LONDON – Presidential elections day on March 31 started at the polling station at the Ukrainian Embassy in London and continued with a few after-parties, including one in which prominent experts — London-based economist Timothy Ash and Ukrainian journalist Katya Gorchinskaya spoke.
The Ukrainian Embassy in London opened its doors at 8 a.m. to welcome the first voters. Many Ukrainians came to the polls in national embroidered shirts, vyshyvankas. Yuriy Tabert was among them. He has been living in the United Kingdom for 17 years working as an engineer and attends every election.
“We are constantly concerned about the situation in Ukraine,” he said, indicating that he has national consciousness and considers both Ukraine and Britain as his native countries.
His wife Maryana, holding their 2-year-old son Oliver, added: “We are clear about the importance of voting as everything depends on what path Ukraine takes after the elections. Either we will be thrown back indefinitely or we will be moving forward.”
Geneticist and DNA scientist Andriy Semyhodskyi has voted in the Ukrainian presidential and parliament elections in London for more than 20 years. He feels responsibility to do so, because of his love for Ukraine, said Semyhodskiy: “Firstly, it is my motherland. Secondly, I come to Ukraine very often and Ukraine is forever with me.”
“I elect the president because my children may return back to Ukraine, who knows? It is important for me that people in Ukraine live as people in the West do, but not as in Russia,” he continued.
Overall 2,486 people registered to vote in London, the electoral commission’s head Oksana Rivnyi said to the Kyiv Post. According to her, by 4.30 p.m. (6.30 p.m. by Kyiv time) around 1050 people voted and many more were expected to show up. However, not everyone was allowed to participate in the elections:
“People come over with expired passports and if the passport is not valid at the polls day they are not permitted to vote.”
Rivnyi said that they had to reject around 150 people: “Some of them did not find their names in the list of voters – that was a Central Election Commission mistake – that they did not add some people to the lists. Some came with Ukrainian internal passports.”
Along with the CEC, some voters made mistakes. They had to use reserve ballots, said Rivnyi, as some of the voters put their signatures in the wrong place.
Three election observers were watching the process. One of them, BogdanTerletsky, from Ukrainian World Congress, said:
“Everything is calm and quiet. Time to time the room was very crowded though, but none of the breaches occurred.”
Later in the afternoon people started to gather in Ukrainian Social Club Karpaty, which is located next to the Embassy. Ukrainian borsch and varenyky were served together with various beverages. People played pool and chatted about politics.
Who will rule Ukraine and how – these questions were widely discussed at the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral during “Ukrainian Presidential Elections Night” organized by the Ukrainian Institute in London.
There was online streaming in the background, talking, pies and wine.
Ash said if Poroshenko remains a President for a second term it will be “gradual glacial change” for Ukraine. “You know what you get with Poroshenko. I would almost call it stagnation,” he continued.
Regarding Zelenskiy, Ash is not that certain: “Zelenskiy is high risk, but potentially high reward.”
“Everything depends on his team. There are very competent economists, foreign affairs specialists, Ukraine has some very talented people. The challenge for Zelenskiy is choosing the right ones,” he said.
Zelenskiy’s team recently revealed they had found some – former Finance Minister Oleksandr Danyliuk and ex-Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine Aivaras Abromavicius.
Katya Gorchinskaya, former CEO of Hromadske Television, provided the audience with an inside view. Referencing to her sources in Zelenskiy’s team, Gorchinskaya said that he does not change policies that his advisers write and constantly repeats that he is not going to appoint those who have already been in power.
She added: “He has an inner circle of seven people and those seven include two people from (billionaire oligarch Ihor) Kolomoisky’s camp. So it is pretty clear that Kolomoisky has his fingers in this pie very deeply.”
However, those two does not have much influence on Zelenskiy according to Gorchinskaya: “My friend said that Zelenskiy himself started to develop an independent mind, more or less.”
Another political expert hesitated on whether Zelenskiy is up to the job
Ian Bond, a foreign policy director at the Centre for European Reform, said: “Zelenskiy has no experience in any description in politics rather than on screen,” he said, referencing to the TV series, Servant of the People, where Zelenskiy plays the president of Ukraine. “The big concern is that he may turn out to be just a front for Kolomoisky and Kolomoisky does not have a good reputation.”
He suggested that the West have a temptation to think in a way “you would better dealing with the devil you know, as the English are saying. That is not to imply that Poroshenko is the devil, it is just a say.”
“I suspect that in their heart of hearts, many Western politicians and officials who follow events in Ukraine would wish that somehow Ukraine had managed to come up with a better set of leading candidates for this election,” Bond said.
After two polling locations in London and Edinburgh are closed, votes will be counted, and the protocol with the elections’ results put first in an envelope, then in the strongbox and sent to Kyiv by diplomatic air mail.
According to the electoral commission, 1,204 out of 2,486 people participated in the elections in London. Poroshenko came first, getting the support of 635 votes, leader of the Civil Position political party and ex-defense minister Anatoliy Grytsenko got 186 votes and comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy got 171 votes.
