Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko delivers a speech during a ceremony to enthrone Metropolitan Epifaniy, head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, in Kiev on February 3 [Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters]
Leonid Ragozin, Al Jazeera: Can Petro Poroshenko win Ukraine's presidential race?
Ukraine's incumbent is lagging behind in polls, but he still has time to manipulate political events to his advantage.
In Ukraine, incumbents tend to be underdogs in presidential races. Never in the 21st century has an acting Ukrainian president, or his appointee, been a frontrunner in a presidential election and, in fact, in the case of former President Viktor Yanukovych, the incumbent never even made it to the polls, having been toppled by a popular revolution.
But President Petro Poroshenko seems dead set on breaking this pattern and winning a re-election. Just seven months ago, he was lagging far behind former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, and a few more candidates in the polls, but by the end of 2018 he was already breathing down her neck. January polls pushed both him and Tymoshenko back, elevating TV comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy to the status of the frontrunner. But, given his ability to shape the political agenda, Poroshenko still has a chance, if the stars align the right way.
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WNU Editor: The current front runner is Volodymyr Zelensky .... A TV actor who played Ukraine's president could now become the actual president (CNBC). But from now to the day of election Ukrainian President Poroshenko can shape events to help him win. My prediction .... he will try to engineer a confrontation with Russia a week or two before the election.
1 comment:
Whether or not Poroshenko or Zelensky makes it to the second round, it will either be one (or both) of them or Yulia Tymoshenko. She does not have the current negatives of Poroshenko, and unlike Zelensky is a proven campaigner with solid support. She has her own issues of course.
What I find interesting is that this will be the second Ukrainian presidential election that does not have a West (Ukrainian nationalist) vs East (Russophone) dynamic. The combined polling of the eastern candidates generally puts them behind anyone of these three. The second round contest will only include figures who belong to the western camp. The combination of increased nationalist feeling (as a result of decades of independence and rising civil society), anger at Russian invasion, and loss of Russophone electorates to Russia, seems to have decisively tilted Ukraine to the Ukrainian nationalist side.
That the first post-Maidan election only had strong showing for nationalist candidates is unsurprising. But I thought there would be a reasonable chance for an eastern candidate to come back as the main opposition in the next election. But it did not.
There is an increasing chance that Ukraine has stopped being a "cleft" country as interpreted by Huntington in his Clash of Civilizations and decisively resolved to be a member of the West. This is not yet completely finalized, but the trend is there.
Chris
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