13
Shares
Pinterest Google+

Were one to glance at some of the articles written in the last month about the Ukrainian presidential elections, they would be likely to come away with a rather negative assessment of Petro Poroshenko’s competence as a leader. How else, after all, could a billionaire incumbent lose (by a margin of 73% to 24%, no less) to a comedian with no political experience who’s only campaign promise was “no promises- no disappointments”? Things are, however, more complex than they first appear: Poroshenko could well be argued to be the most able and reform-minded leader in the 28-year history of Independent Ukraine, and Zelensky won as convincingly as he did because, and not in spite of, his dearth of policy ideas.

Many Zelensky voters I spoke to after the first round of voting (Ukraine’s system of electing presidents is similar to the French one) told me they were desperate for change. They felt Poroshenko was the same as the leaders Ukraine had before the 2014 revolution, that corruption was not being dealt with, and that they were poorer than in 2014. These perceptions are reflected nationwide, with an overwhelming 78% of Ukrainians in October 2018 believing that the country was “heading in the wrong direction”. However, this is not an entirely fair assessment of the Poroshenko administration’s performance. More reforms have been undertaken than under any other post-independence president, although admittedly this is more of a reflection of the ineptitude or unwillingness of previous incumbents to push through change than any glowing success on Poroshenko’s part. Progress on corruption has been slow, particularly at lower levels, but the country has nevertheless moved up 22 places in the Corruption Perception Index since 2014. The disparity between these figures and the intensity of public anger at Poroshenko stems largely from the weight of expectation placed upon him in the wake of the 2014 revolution, which became impossible to meet as soon as Crimea was annexed and conflict broke out in the East. GDP growth has been severely affected by the war: since 2016 it has failed to top 3% a year, a paltry recovery after a slump of 18% in 2014-15. Poroshenko could do little about this, particularly when he was forced to immediately divert his attention to rebuilding the armed forces, gutted by decades of spending cuts and embezzlement, and then using his new army to fight a war in the East. He had very little choice but to do so: a peace settlement which involved the breakaway of the rebel-controlled territory would have been deeply unacceptable to the Ukrainian people; and the rebels would not have agreed to anything less. He was also hampered by the parliament, which was consistently unwilling to co-operate on key issues of state-owned enterprise privatisation and land reform.

Unfortunately for the President, Ukrainians wanted a single, easily removable, figure to blame for the lack of growth and failure to stamp out everyday corruption (most of the reforms tackled high-level corrupt practices), turning their ire on him. They were aided in this by the media, and in particular TV channels, many of which are owned by oligarchs opposed to Poroshenko. For example, the network which has been most overtly critical of the President, 1+1, is owned by Ihor Kolomoisky, an oligarch who is currently in self-imposed exile in Geneva. He is accused, along with his business partner Gennadiy Bogolubov, by Ukrainian authorities of defrauding PrivatBank (the largest commercial bank in Ukraine), which he co-owned until its nationalisation in 2016, to the tune of $2.5 billion. At this point, it is crucial to note that Zelensky has built his career on the 1+1 network, which currently airs four of his shows, and has visited Kolomoisky in Geneva and Tel Aviv 13 times over the past two years.

If all these things are true, why did 73% of the Ukrainian electorate vote for Zelensky in the second round of the election on April 21st? By and large, Ukrainians know that Kolomoisky owns 1+1, and that TV channels in Ukraine often serve the political agendas of their owners (Indeed, Zelensky has joked about this fact in his series Servant of the People, which portrays his character as a noble underdog who is constantly and unfairly attacked by the oligarch’s TV channels).

Despite not holding a single campaign rally or press conference, and taking part in what was possibly the least substantive candidates’ debate in modern history, Zelensky was able to win the largest vote share of any candidate in the history of Ukraine. He promised change without proposing any radical shift in approach. His only foreign policy difference from Poroshenko is the promise of a referendum on NATO membership, if Ukraine is given it, which is not going to happen anytime soon. His USP was simply that he was a political outsider.

To understand how this happened one must first recognise how utterly jaded the Ukrainian people presently are. They have lived through two revolutions in the past fifteen years, both brief glimmers of hope in a sea of embezzlement and corruption, topped off by a prolonged war, which has so far claimed 13,000 lives. Ukrainians have taken from the past 28 years one lesson above all: that all politicians are thieves, and cannot be trusted. Once this is understood, it is no surprise at all that Zelensky won by such a resounding margin. The people were so repulsed by politics as a whole that they put in place the candidate who was most unlike the others in the field: a 41-year-old comedian. Ukrainian elections have traditionally exposed the divide between the East and West of the country. Zelensky transcended this, uniting a coalition of voters from every part of Ukraine by either not giving his opinion on controversial issues or finding the vaguest possible middle-ground.  He said little during the campaign because he knew people were not voting for him, but rather voting against Poroshenko and all that he, fairly or not, represents to the collective consciousness of the Ukrainian public.

The result of the election can thus largely be explained by the unfulfilled hopes of the 2014 revolution, which have soured into apathy and rage directed at politicians. Conventional politics seems to have failed the electorate, so they look to increasingly heterodox alternatives. In reality, though, it is unlikely much will change: Zelensky has already become more hostile in his rhetoric towards Russia, and many of his senior campaign figures are former Poroshenko allies. He will not be the worst president Ukraine has had: Leonid Kuchma is alleged to have ordered the assassination of a prominent journalist, and Viktor Yanukovych was physically chased out of the country, so Zelensky almost certainly will not be in the bottom two. Despite all the dramatic headlines, Ukraine seems to be on course for another five years of mediocre growth and hope gradually turning to disappointment. The separatist republics in the East are in turn likely to follow the path of Transnistria, the unrecognised, independent state that is de jure part of Moldova. Nevertheless, the events observed over the past month feel like a twenty-first century tribute to Nikolai Gogol, one of Ukraine’s greatest sons: the people, furious at the incompetence of their politicians, elect an empty chair to be their president.

Author

Previous post

Demanding justice for the victims of the 1998-1999 conflict - the key for Kosovo to reach a deal with Serbia

Next post

Joe Biden Embraces America