Yulia Tymoshenko is wagering on the team that she lost in the presidential elections with

Photo: Reuters

Today the meeting of the political council of the Batkivshchyna party will be held, which, as it is planned, will approve the final variant of the electoral list and the strategy for conducting the election campaign. This will be the last stage of preparations to the congress planned for September 14. As people’s deputy of Batkivshchyna, who requested anonymity, told Capital, the party list remains raw. He assured the publication that Yulia Tymoshenko is still on the top of the list, though there was information that she will run in the majoritarian constituency.

Leader of the Batkivshchyna faction Serhiy Sobolev, Ivan Kyrylenko and one of the organizers of the Maidan, deputy of the Kyiv City Council representing Batkivshchyna Ihor Lutsenko may also end up in the top ten of the electoral list.

“This is the choice of the party. I hope that by becoming a member of the parliament I will gain more levers of influence to resolve those problems that Kyiv faces,” Lutsenko told Capital. The leaders of oblast organizations of parties that during the elections will turn into headquarters make up the core of the electoral list.

Meanwhile, members of Batkivshchyna that won seats in the parliament in 2012 in majoritarian constituencies are today considering the possibility of running once again, people’s deputy Volodymyr Yavorivskiy (Batkivshchyna), who won in the election district No. 213 in the Desnyanskiy District of Kyiv, informed Capital.

He said the final decision regarding majoritarian deputies will be made by the political council “based on the party’s interests”. In truth though, many deputies that were elected in majoritarian constituencies recently deserted the team of Yulia Tymoshenko. For example, out of ten deputies that won in Kyiv only four remained loyal to Batkivshchyna.

The majority of deputies that joined the Batkivshchyna faction having won in the majoritarian constituencies now joined the People’s Front of Arseniy Yatsenyuk or the Petro Poroshenko Bloc. “There is no time to promote oneself in a constituency. For this reason, there are no politicians willing to risk going there. Tymoshenko wanted public activists to be in the top ten and the financers to run quietly in the majoritarian constituencies. But they are refusing to do so,” a member of the Batkivshchyna faction told Capital on conditions of anonymity.

The deputy said that the protracting of the formation of the electoral list is also associated with the failed talks between Tymoshenko and well-known activists of the Maidan regarding mutual participation in the elections. “The congress was planned for September 5, but had to be postponed. Talks with Tetyana Chornovol, who joined Yatsenyuk, produced no results. There is no clarity about the participation of Yehor Sobolev. His Volya party already joined the project of Mayor of Lviv Andriy Sadoviy,” the source told Capital.

Another source in the faction said that Tymoshenko managed to finally agree with Head of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast State Administration Ihor Kolomoiskiy on financial support of the election campaign. However, the source could not say whether Kolomoiskiy’s people will be on the electoral list.

Former head of the Kyiv City State Administration Volodymyr Bondarenko told Capital that today talks are being held that representatives of four voluntary teams formed in Kyiv will participate in the Batkivshchyna election campaign.

“It cannot be ruled out that their representatives will end up on the electoral list,” said Bondarenko. But there is no unified position in the party on the inclusion of heroes of the ATO and Maidan. “It would be great if people that not only know how to speak into a microphone during demonstrations, but also have knowledge in a certain sphere, came to join,” people’s deputy Serhiy Teryokhin (Batkivshchyna) told Capital.

At the same time, an employee of the central election headquarters of Batkivshchyna said the appearance of members of the ATO on the electoral list has almost been approved. The election campaign of Tymoshenko will be built on the defense capabilities of the country and the failed actions of the president’s team in the Donbas region. He said political scientist Ihor Zhdanov and a citizen of Israel Tal Zieberstein, who worked with Tymoshenko during the presidential elections, are today developing a strategy. “Georgian and French political scientists will be auxiliary,” the source told Capital.

As he noted, sociology shows that Yatsenyuk and Turchynov’s leaving the party did not have a critical impact on the rating of Batkivshchyna, which has today equaled the person rating of Tymoshenko.