Talk Elections

Whom You support?

So a lot of the Ukrainian parliament are liberals and conservatives, is there a Labor party or movement? What do unions go for in this environment?

Serhiy Kaplin, or whichever candidate seeks to:

1. Combat fascist behavior perpetrated by Svoboda, Social Nationalists and the Civil Corps Azov.
2. Pledges to investigate the murders of the ten opposition figures in 2015.
3. Stand firmly against blind nationalism and for the rights of workers and unions across national boundaries.

None of the above. Oleh Tyahnybok

Ms. Yulia isn’t running?

She declared her candidacy

Someone who represents the nationalist right, is committed to destroying the power of the oligarchs, and isn't bought and paid for.

... but this one is too extreme for me. Not going to support someone from Svoboda.

I have been supporting Tymoshenko for more than a decade now.

Poroshenko has like sub-Flanby level approvals atm iirc - will he even run again?

No, almost definitely not.

Not a big follower of Ukrainian politics but I can tell you, definitely not Poroshenko or anyone from his Bloc.

WI: Valentyn Nalyvaichenko

none

Kaplin.

#ImWithHer #ВонаПрацює #VoteTymoshenko

We are now six months out from the Ukrainian presidential election, which will likely decide to what extent the country can achieve real and lasting reform going forwards. President Poroshenko's formerly strong lead has evaporated in the past months, with those being most likely to make it to the second round currently being Yulia Tymoshenko of Fatherland Party, Anatoliy Hrytsenko of Civic Position, and Yuri Boyko of Opposition Bloc. Barring a miracle, my preferred candidate (see sig) will almost certainly not even be relevant.

I typically characterize Tymoshenko as 'Ukraine's Hillary Clinton' to Americans, in that she, like Clinton, has been around forever, is quite polarizing, and has an air of corruption around her.

I don't know that much about Hrytsenko - his rise has been a relatively recent phenomenon. He was Minister of Defense under President Yushchenko, and has been accused of being responsible for the sad state of the Ukrainian army leading up to the Russian invasion.

Boyko was Minister of Energy under President Yanukovych, and his party is built off the ruins of Party of Regions after Yanukovych fled to Russia. I think he has almost no chance of actually winning, as most people I know would vote for literally anyone else if he makes it to the second round.

I am not eligible to vote, though my relatives are primarily Tymoshenko supporters, and of these three she is probably my first choice. I hope though that there is some other disruption between now and the election, as these are not inspiring choices for the future of Ukraine.

Two 'wild cards' which have the potential to shake things up a bit are Svyatoslav Vakarchuk and Vladimir Zelenski - respectively, a popular musician and an actor in a show in which an ordinary schoolteacher suddenly becomes President. They are both potentially within reach of making a runoff. While I am not in favor of political turnover for its own sake, Ukraine I think could use a leader who is not of the old oligarch class - which these three and Poroshenko essentially all are.

1)What party has the union and/or worker vote. How does the parties view the trade Unions
2)How do minorities such as LGBT, Jews, and Tatars vote for
3)How credible are corruption allegations against Tymoshenko
4)since fighting lost interest around 2016 in the US media, what’s happened on the eastern front. How does that translate to policy and campaigning
5) what issues are hot button in Ukraine right now

'Labor' I would say is unfortunately caught up in Soviet nostalgia a bit - I would say the most left-wing party economically is OB. But I doubt it will be that important a political divide for this election.


I guess you want Lyashko, so I suppose we can be happy you won't be voting.

1) Oligarch Akhmetov has great influence on unions, as his homeland - Donbass - is the most industrial region. So they would vote for OB/For Life. But workers from the west of the country would vote for pro-western parties, so geographical divide is more important.

2) Jews - for different parties, some are supporters of eastern parties (Rabinovich, the head of the For Life party, is the classical jewish man from Odessa). Tatars are living mostly in Crimea, they voted for pro-western parties like "Our Ukraine". Now their leaders are in Poroshenko party, but i doubt many tatars will vote.

3) As credible as allegations against any Ukrainian major politicians, so - highly credible.

4) Some local fightings happened every day. Now it is low-level conflict. Important question is transition of prisoners between Ukraine and Russia/separatists.

5) Wages, high-cost of living, corruption, immigration of ukrainian workers, IMF program, infrastructure, car accidents etc.

This is Ukraine. All politicians are corrupt. The question is only to which extent.

Don't know much about him, so I'm interested: why would I prefer him?

Since this thread seems to be more about our opinion than about actual election discussion, and since Karpatsky opened a more fact-based thread, I requested to have this one moved to Individual Politics by one of the moderators.

Interesting thread, have a few more questions.

Tell me more about this Rinakhtov fellow, any info I get is kind of divided on the Ukraine sovereignty issue. Some sources, like what is indicated here says he is supporting the Russians, yet others show him fighting the separatists. I would like to know of wether Lyashko is bought by him, as he seems anti-Russia.

How is the IMF issue and Ukrainian migration viewed? Is there reforms underway? How w is the Ukrainian economy doing?

What parties and candidates are the least bought by oligarchs?

I wonder if emigration to Poland (and further to other European countries) in any way influenced voting patterns in Ukraine. Do you think such phenomena can be observed somehow? I've met few Ukrainians in Poland and they were very negative towards how their homeland is doing now in terms of everything ranging from street cleanliness to corruption. On the other hand their perception of Poland was rather positive compared to Ukraine. Could this lead to some sort of contestantion (not massive though, rather among migrants) of participation in elections etc. in Ukraine? 

Akhmetov is doing what is good for him. At the start, he supported separatists to get concessions from new Kiev government. But situation went out of his control. Now he controls pro-Russian OB and pro-western Lyashko party. Both support laws which help Akhmetov business empire. Also Renat has good relations with Poroshenko.

Lyashko was very anti-Russian during last elections, but this time, as he tries to win some votes in East, he has changed his rhetoric to some degree.

Migration is viewed as bad thing (it definitely is), but noone knows what to do. IMF program is supported by governing coalition and Self-Reliance, other parties are against.
Now the most important question is, would be there more tranches from IMF to Ukraine? Last tranche was year ago, and IMF demands from Kiev raising of gas costings for population - Poroshenko promised such raising long time ago. But government doesn't want to do this, it would kill all political opportunities of Poroshenko, his party, Groysman and Popular Front.
Basically, if government doesn't raise costing in two months, IMF would close its program. After that, economists expect major economical crisis for Ukraine, maybe even default.

I have a Ukrainian friend who told me the Ukrainian government will often refuse to even issue passports to attractive young women for fear they will leave to become mail order brides/prostitutes.

Opinion poll from "Rating Group"
All participants:

Timoshenko 11.1%
Gritsenko 6.7%
Boyko 6.4%
Lyashko 5.9%
Poroshenko 5.3%

Likely voters without undecided:

Timoshenko 17.7%
Gritsenko 10.7%
Boyko 8.9%
Lyashko 8.5%
Poroshenko 8.3%

()

>poroshenko below lyashko

ouch

Within the margin! I'm interested will he overperform Yushenko's 2010 result (5,75%) ?

It seems the last 3 Ukraine Presidents all finished their term with horrible approval ratings.   Yushchenko ran in 2010 and finished in the low single digits.  Yanukovych was overthrown in a coup but would have for sure lost by a mile if he ran for re-election.  It seems now Poroshenko is meeting the same fate.  I guess the voter expectations are just way beyond what the current Ukraine state is capable of generating.   

Not a coup, but beyond that you may be right. The fundamental problem IMO is that wealth and media control is so concentrated in the oligarch class that it is difficult to pass real reforms - this is Poroshenko's big problem, at the end of the day he is still an oligarch and had that conflict of interest the whole way through.

I doubt about Yanukovich tho. He had about 20-30% in all opinion polls until his escaping. He would have lost 2015 presidential elections to opposition candidate (Clichko/Poroshenko), but he definitely would be in the second tour. His situation was different from Yuschenko's and Poroshenko's, as Yanukovish was non-alternative candidate from the East.

I did recall he was polling OK in late 2013 but those polls were done before the 2014 crisis.  I suspect after the crisis started there is no way he could be polling that well so even if he survived the Euromaidan uprising he was for sure doomed in any re-election effort.  Most likely by a mile.

For Ukraine I am usually pro-Putin/Russia.  So I guess OB's Yuri Boyko is my guy in this race.  He will not win of course. Putin took away the most reliable pro-Russia region in Ukraine, Crimea.  Yuri Boyko would need those votes to have a chance and clearly Crimea will not be voting in this election. 

He even leaded in these polls (January 2014)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_Ukrainian_presidential_election,_2014

Does anyone know why this thread was moved out of Int'l Politics? Does it somehow not qualify?

Anyways, the latest Razumkov polls has Tymoshenko with a commanding lead of 17.8%, with Hrytsenko being second with 9.7%. In this case there would be a whopping six candidates within a few points of making the second round.  Interestingly, this is the first poll in a while to include both Vakarchuk & Zelenski, and they both retain relatively high levels of support. I would think in reality, if either of them does end up running, only one will, and they will draw on a similar pool of voters.

Interesting side not from the poll: a large plurality (41%) support electoral reform to return to an open list proportional system before the next parliamentary election (which will be sometime in fall). Currently it is a mixed system, like Germany. More respondents would prefer a FPP system (16.5%) to the current system (15%), which says something.

Because there was another thread, I think, and this one's OP was basically "who would you vote for?", which is Individual Politics content.

Still interested in learning more about him. Could you elaborate?

As far as I know it is not "like in Germany", because the Ukrainian system is not proportional: unlike in Germany, Ukraine does not have a mechanism with overhang and additional mandates to make sure the ultimate seat distribution is proportional. Therefore the Ukrainian system can be classified as MMM whereas the German system is MMP.

Which one is most pro-NATO?

New poll from KMIS
Timoshenko 12,9%
Poroshenko 8,4%
Vakarchuk 7,6%
Zelensky 7,5%
Boyko 7,1%
Lyashko 5,2%
Rabinovich 4,3%
Shevchenko 2,2%

Tymoshenko, Tyahnybok, Lyasko

Yeah, it looks like my thread was merged with this one, and they were both put under Indiv Pol rather than Intl Pol. I really think it should be moved back - the current arrangement marginalizes it for the interested.

Lyashko is a right-wing nationalist for people who are not lite-fascist enough to unironically vote for Svoboda. He checks all your boxes, the problem being that the EU is popular enough in Ukraine that anyone who is 'nationalist right' by your standards (which I read as meaning Euroskeptic) is going to be a bit out there. The main issue to set him apart is nuclear rearmament. To be honest, it was probably unfair for me to say that based on your short statement - had you omitted the word 'nationalist', I would have recommended Sadovyi, who is a center-right reformist who might have been a serious threat to the oligarch establishment had Poroshenko not spent a lot of time over the past years smearing him over a non-issue garbage scandal.

I think you are right - I did not know enough about the particulars of the arrangement, what I meant is that they have both proportional and district election.