On Jan. 21, in a huge shed on the outskirts of Kyiv, the Radical Party of Oleh Lyashko held an unusual party convention. The party name was hardly ever mentioned – the only focus was Lyashko himself.
After long speeches praising Lyashko, his childhood, his connection to Ukrainian farmers, the convention of some 1,100 delegates supported Lyashko’s candidacy in March 31 presidential election.
For Lyashko, 46, it will be his second presidential election. The populist leader of the Radical Party came third in the 2014 election, earning 8.3 percent of the votes. He was outrun by the winner, President Petro Poroshenko, and the runner-up, ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Later in 2014, his Radical Party got 7.4 percent in the parliamentary election, winning 21 seats in parliament.
Now Lyashko will try again. The polls haven’t been generous to him. Various pollsters in the past months ranked him fifth or sixth.
His agenda is a conservative and a populist one, centered on farmers, land, and poverty, and presented in his trademark emotional style. This was reflected in the convention that nominated him for presidency.
The event kicked off with the crowd chanting “Lyashko the people’s president!” and was followed with archive footage as the convention was timed to the 100-year anniversary of the unification act between central and western Ukraine in 1919. The transition from past to present was swift, with the crowd repeating its chants to hint that the only person who can unify Ukraine is Lyashko. The chant repeated every several minutes.
After the short introductory part, the presenter gave way for the speakers. They were Andriy Lozovyi, Lyashko’s right hand man; Galina Ivanivna, Lyashko’s teacher in preschool; and Lyashko himself.
Galina Ivanivna talked about Lyashko’s upbringing. “He was a special boy, a leader,” she said. After a wave of loud chants, Lozovyi takes the stage. Even though Lozovyi, 29, met Lyashko as a grown up, he spoke of Lyashko’s birth – how the future leader was born “against all odds.”
“While 92 percent of children die when the umbilical cord is tied around their neck, Lyashko survived with god’s help and by the will of the people and became the presidential candidate,” said Lozovyi.
Participants of the Radical Party congress react as they listen to Oleh Lyashko, the leader of the Radical Party, on Jan. 21, 2019, in Kyiv. (Kostyantyn Chernichkin)
After the short, five-minute-long speeches by the teacher and Lozovyi, Lyashko took the stage.
Before he speaks, a video rolls, showing a farmer from Cherkassy, a worker from Dnipro, and a local politician from Lviv, telling the delegates why they support Lyashko’s candidacy.
Lyashko began his speech waving a stack of paper.
“I have here the agreement with the International Monetary Fund,” he told the audience, referring to the 2014 agreement according to which International Monetary Fund signed up to lend Ukraine $17 billion in several tranches, with sensitive conditions attached – such as a demand to rise gas prices.
Lyashko promises to revise or scrap the agreement when elected.
“They didn’t translate it into Ukrainian, so that the people wouldn’t know what is inside,” Lyashko continues.
The bullet points of his agenda came accompanied by long monologues about people fallen on hard times.
While some points were broad and foggy, others were precise. Scrap all international agreements or revise their terms, revise the state budget and raise salaries for all except the high-rank officials, prolong the land moratorium, the ban on the selling of land on, and give out free land to farmers, as well as subsidizing their local production.
A special point concerned cattle owners – they would receive an Hr 5,000 subsidy “for each cow.” Pigs and sheep were not mentioned.
Among the most radical things, the new candidate proposed to return the death penalty, abolished in Ukraine in 2000, even though it is forbidden by the Council Europe. Lyashko retorted by saying desperate times call for desperate measures. Applauses were inevitable. The dialogue between organizers of the event, who stood near, was worrisome, Lyashko went off script and the event took longer than planned.
While the monologue continued, we talked to some delegates, asking where they were from and why those at the convention of the Radical Party turned out to be a one man show.
The majority of delegates were from Kyiv and in a private conversation they stated that the party meeting was earlier this week and that the whole event was a gala. The fierce and strong leader Lyashko, with the Mussolini like gestures, will make his supporters proud.
Answering the question why the name of the party nominating the candidate appeared only once during the 2.5 hour event, while the flags and video screens were decorated with Lyashko’s name and slogan before he was officially elected as candidate, delegates did not give a clear response, citing that Ukraine has a personified political system.
Lyashko was elected unanimously. “Lyashko the people’s president!” the crowd erupted.
