With the election campaign season for Ukraine’s March 2019 presidential elections set to officially begin in January, the field of candidates is unlikely to change. In March 2019, Ukrainian voters will be choosing between incumbent Petro Poroshenko and a strongman, Anatoliy Grytsenko, who wants to return Ukraine to a presidential system and who likes authoritarian leaders and populists.
Poroshenko’s election campaign is promoting patriotic themes of “church, language, army,” which at a time of war with Russia should have strong appeal in western and central Ukraine. Poroshenko’s campaign promotes him as the only candidate unwilling to sell out Ukraine in a “peace deal” that would amount to capitulation and therefore the only candidate who is blocking Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategic objectives in Ukraine.
Although the Poroshenko Bloc and Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s Popular Front provided the majority of votes for reforms since 2014, many of these are unpopular or have yet to bring positive results. Therefore, the Poroshenko election campaign is not promoting itself as the guarantor of the continuation of reforms.
2019 will be the third presidential election campaign for Grytsenko, a former defense minister. In an interview, Grytsenko praised authoritarian leaders, including Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Grytsenko is the only candidate who supports a return to a presidential constitution which Ukraine had under Presidents Leonid Kuchma (1994-2005) and Viktor Yanukovych (2010-2014). Of the former 27 post-communist states, those that have successfully democratized and joined the European Union and NATO have parliamentary systems; presidential systems are common in Eurasia where they are associated with authoritarian systems and kleptocratic regimes.
With the Civic Initiative party never having had a parliamentary presence, Grytsenko has not explained how he will find the 300 plus votes to change the constitution. If elected, Grytsenko will also find it difficult to form a parliamentary coalition and government.
Three pro-Russian populists from the former Party of Regions will be campaigning – Yuriy Boyko (For Life party), Vadym Novinsky (Party of Peace), and Yevhen Murayev (Nashi party). Boyko’s alliance with Rabinovych and Viktor Medvedchuk makes him the most pro-Russian candidate. The godfather of Medvedchuk’s daughter is none other than Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The pro-Russian election campaign is hampered by two factors. Firstly, 16 percent of Ukrainian voters and 27 election districts are under Russian occupation in the Crimea and Donbas. Without these voters and eastern Ukrainian voter apathy, a pro-Russian candidate could never have won the presidential elections.
Secondly, if the pro-Russian camp had united around one candidate it may have won second or more likely third place. This is now impossible after the Opposition Bloc split and the ‘gas lobby’ (Boyko, Serhiy Lyovochkin) were expelled. The co-habitation of the ‘gas lobby’ and Donetsk clan in the Party of Regions (2005-2014) and Opposition Bloc (2014-2018) is over. There are currently three pro-Russian candidates from the former Opposition Bloc and Donbas oligarch Serhiy Taruta who in the past has been an ally of ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
All four of these candidates are playing on anti-war populism by promising to bring peace to the Donbas. The contours of how peace will come about are vague but based on what Victor Pinchuk proposed three years ago and Medvedchuk’s proposals the basis for a peace deal acceptable to Moscow would be Ukraine’s recognition of the Crimea as Russian and in return the two Russian proxies in the Donbas are reintegrated as an autonomous entity into Ukraine. Putin and pro-Russian political forces understand they can only regain their influence if pro-Russian voters can again participate in Ukrainian elections.
Of the three pro-European Union populists the only surprise is Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovy whose Samopomych faction routinely votes along the same lines as Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna. They, and Oleh Lyashko’s Radical Party, gave no votes for the International Monetary Fund-compliant 2019 budget on November 22.
Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchinais a member of the centre-right European People’s Party but her politics have become increasingly leftist. Tymoshenko is opposed to any foreign investment in gas pipelines and therefore opposes the government’s policy on seeking Western investment. Tymoshenko has also been the most vocal Ukrainian politician in calling for an extension of the existing moratorium on land sales, warning otherwise ‘there will be a huge civil war by the agrarian mafia against farmers’. Tymoshenko is leading a campaign to collect signatures to hold a referendum against land reforms.
Land reforms are intimately bound up with a successful reform of decentralization which has led to a massive growth in budgetary revenues kept at the local level. Land reform would boost growth and employment, the World Bank argues. Populist opposition to land reform is matched by equally strident opposition to medical and pension reforms, both demanded by the West and adopted last year.Medical reforms are being led by Health Minister Ulana Suprun, who is widely praised for successfully fighting corruption in the health sector.
According to Vox Ukraine, Batkivshchyna has the worst voting record on reforms of the five pro-European parliamentary factions. Vox Ukraine calculated the Popular Front and Poroshenko Bloc had supported reforms in 79% and 73% respectively of votes. The Radical Party and Samopomych voted for reforms about the same (63-64%) and Batkivshchyna the lowest, in only half of cases (52%). Below them were two oligarch factions, Volya Narodu and Vidrodzhennya (33-37%), and the worst, the Opposition Bloc (17%).
This record is also reflected in the voting records on reforms of parliamentary faction leaders. The leading supporters of reforms are Maksym Burbak (Popular Front) in 21stout of 423 deputies who voted in support in 90% of cases and Artur Herasymov (Poroshenko Bloc) in 56th place who voted in 86%. Again, the Radicals (Oleh Lyashko) and Samopomych (Oleh Berezyuk) are similar with 161stand 171stplaces respectively and support for reforms in 72-73% of cases.
Tymoshenko has a worse voting record on reforms than Batkivshchyna and therefore she is in 330rd place having voted for only a third of reforms (34%). Her position is lower than the leader of the oligarch Volya Narodu faction (Yaroslav Moskalenko) who is in 284thplace because he voted in favour of half of reforms (51%). Slightly below Tymoshenko is Vitaliy Khomutynnin (Vidrodzhennya) in 340thplace and Oleksandr Vilkul (Opposition Bloc) in 394th.
Populism has appeal at a time of economic hardship and with no end in sight for the Russian-Ukrainian war. This appeal exists because, as Vox Ukraine has recorded, populist politicians in Ukraine – similar to elsewhere in Europe and the US – are economical with the truth and promise the Earth. Tymoshenko is in first place in what Vox Ukraine called the “first-ever ranking of populists and liars in Ukrainian politics,” followed by former Opposition Bloc MP’s Rabinovych and Boyko and Opposition Bloc leader Oleksandr Vilkul. Samopomych faction leader Berezyuk came in fifth place.
Oligarchs in Ukraine have never been a united political force, and this is even more the case since 2014. Oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky is bitter about the loss of rents from two corrupt schemes in the state oil refining company Ukrnafta,that he controlled since a government resolution in 2008, and the nationalization of PrivatBank through, which $5.6 billion was laundered in 2005-2016.
Kolomoisky is supporting three candidates. The comedian Volodymyr Zelensky and head of the fake nationalist party Ukrop Oleksandr Shevchenko are spoilers and therefore technical candidates. Kolomoysky’s main “anti-Poroshenko” electoral alliance is with Tymoshenko. Not surprisingly 1+1, Ukraine’s most popular television channel is virulently anti-Poroshenko. Inter, Ukraine’s second most popular television channel and owned by the “gas lobby,” is likewise anti-Poroshenko.
Ukraine’s traditional second round of presidential elections pitting a pro-Russian versus a pro-Western candidate did not happen in 2014 and will not happen next year. The most likely scenario is incumbent Poroshenko facing populist Tymoshenko in the second round, with Grytsenko and Sadovy coming third and fourth in the first round.
The outcome of Ukraine’s 2019 presidential election is unknown. But what is known is that whoever is elected will shape the outcome of the parliamentary elections eight months later and whether Ukraine’s European integration will be irreversible by 2024.
Taras Kuzio is a professor in the department of political science at National University Kyiv Mohyla Academy and co-author with with Paul D’Anieri of The Sources of Russia’s Great Power Politics:Ukraine and the Challenge to the European Order(2018).
