/Anti-Establishment Uprising Set to Upend Ukraine’s Parliament

Anti-Establishment Uprising Set to Upend Ukraine’s Parliament

A woman walks out of a voting booth at a polling station during Ukraine’s parliamentary election in Kiev on July 21.

Photographer: Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images

Ukraine’s anti-establishment political turn is poised to accelerate in Sunday’s snap general elections, with ex-comedian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s movement on track to sweep traditional forces out of power.

Half a decade after street protests that toppled Russian-backed leader Viktor Yanukovych, Zelenskiy has tapped into voter anger over the lack of progress in flushing dirty officials out of state institutions and companies. His Servant of the People party — named after the television show that propelled him to fame — built up a commanding lead in opinion polls in less than a year of existence, while more established rivals withered.

Final Round Of Ukraine Presidential Election

Photographer: Christopher Occhicone/Bloomberg

Like the main character of his television show, a teacher who is thrust into the position of head of state, Zelenskiy had no political experience before winning a landslide election in April. He has pledged to tackle corruption, energize the economy and resolve the violent conflict with Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine’s east that has killed at least 13,000 people since 2014.

Ukraine’s complex electoral system means that Zelenskiy’s party, whose popularity has more than tripled since his election, may need a coalition partner and will face strong opposition in a political arena that has humbled more experienced candidates, including his predecessor Petro Poroshenko.

“It will mean a new wave of structural and anti-corruption reforms,” said Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Penta research institute in Kiev. “His main problem will be to keep unity in his team.”


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Opinion polls show Servant of the People poised to clinch more than 40% of the vote, a possible record in the nation of 42 million, after Zelenskiy ignored opposition from the sitting parliament and called the elections three months early.

If it needs a partner to rule, the most likely candidate is another upstart party, Holos, led by Ukraine’s most popular rock singer Svyatoslav Vakarchuk. After voting Sunday in Kiev, Zelenskiy said he wanted to appoint a “professional economist” who hasn’t been a prime minister, parliament speaker or leader of a party, to lead the next government. That fits the description of former Finance Minister Oleksandr Danylyuk, who has expressed interest.

Zelenskiy has rejected the idea of tie-ups with Poroshenko’s ruling party, which had about 6% in polls this month. Support for political forces sympathetic to Russia
remains unchanged
from five years ago. For his part, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the two countries will
mend ties despite the conflict
, according to the transcript of a June 19 interview with American film director Oliver Stone.

“Rapprochement is inevitable,” Putin said.

Voting ends at 8 p.m., when an exit poll of the party list winners making make up half of the chamber’s 450 seats, is expected. The other half go to individual mandates, and those results will be expected later.

The latter portion of seats are being contested by oligarchs, sports stars, showbiz celebrities and activists with their own agendas, potentially complicating Zelenskiy’s promise to overhaul Ukraine.


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Most candidates in Servant of the People are political neophytes. Still, some of Zelenskiy’s
early appointments
and business links to billionaire Igor Kolomoisky, whose television channel airs his shows, have drawn criticism that he won’t be able to escape the orbit of the country’s all-powerful oligarchs.

UKRAINE-POLITICS-VOTE-PREPARATIONS

Employees arranges ballot papers at a state printing plant in Kiev on July 11.

Photographer: Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images

Zelenskiy has pledged to revoke automatic immunity from prosecution for lawmakers, a perk that pro-democracy activists say has packed the legislature with businessmen and government officials who have run for office mainly as a way to avoid jail time.

He has also vowed to step up anti-corruption efforts after the previous administration adopted laws only
under intense pressure
from voters and foreign creditors.

Zelenskiy has focused particular attention on this last group, which includes the International Monetary Fund, promising to renew cooperation to secure new aid funds. The Washington-based lender repeatedly held back financial assistance due to a failure by Poroshenko’s administration to push measures through the assembly, known as the Rada, to restructure the economy and fight graft.

“I see the political will, but there are many obstacles,” said Balazs Jarabik, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Much will depend how Zelenskiy and his team can manage the state and the Rada differently than Poroshenko did.”

— With assistance by Volodymyr Verbyany, and Kateryna Choursina

(Updates with Zelenskiy comments in eighth paragraph, Putin in ninth)