The parties of Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk left odious politicians a chance to win a seat in the parliament

Photo: Ivan Chernichkin

As Capital learned, the announcement by the parties Petro Poroshenko Bloc (PPB) and the People’s Front of nomination of single candidates is intended more for self-advertising among the electorate than victory in the constituencies. Under their guise the political forces will also not have to explain why they refused to run in a number of constituencies in which odious candidates are running.

Allies in words not on paper

Yesterday was the deadline for the approval of decisions by the Central Election Commission on the cancelling the registration of candidates for a deputy seat. On the evening before the PPB and the People’s Front (PF) stated that they agreed to reciprocally strike a number of majoritarian candidates from the election list.

The party of Yatsenyuk struck 9 candidates off the list and the president’s political force struck 2 candidates. “We agreed to strike rival candidates from the list in order to reduce the chances of odious politicians that in the previous parliament voted in favor of dictatorial laws on January 16 and now are vying for seats in the new parliament,” member of the PF political council Viktoria Syuma told Capital. She said the striking of candidates was preceded by complicated talks. “They were not technical candidates that prepared themselves for a serious battle in their constituencies,” Syumar underscored.

UDAR member Serhiy Kaplin, who is registered as a candidate of the PPB in the majoritarian constituency No. 144, also welcomes the agreements, though he notes that the parties failed to agree to a single candidate in the majority of the constituencies.

According to Kaplin’s version, the leaders of the PF Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Oleksandr Turchynov are to blame for this. “They want the candidates to continue running as this has a positive impact on the overall results of the party. They also want to promote their representatives counting on local elections in the future,” Kaplin assumes.

In any case, Syumar blames the PBB for its unwillingness to compromise with its political allies. “Our expectations that they would strike their candidates Leonid Yemets, Ksenya Lyapina and Vyacheslav Kostantynivskiy from the elections in the constituencies were in vain,” said Syumar.

A source of the publication in the election headquarters of the PPB assures: the parties were initially interested in striking their strong candidates from the list. “We have our own interests – namely, a majority in the new parliament without the People’s Front, which wants to bring into the parliament as many of its deputies as possible. This means that all these talks are nothing but PR. Losing candidates were stricken from the list on time,” the source underscored.

Lifesavers to the rescue of Lytvyn and Dovhiy

In the opinion of political analyst Kostyantyn Bondarenko, talks on a single candidate may be a pre-election technique. “The party of Poroshenko and the People’s Front are not allies, rather antagonists. The issue of power in the country is at stake, which is why they are making all efforts to fortify their positions in the future parliament,” Bondarenko told Capital. He points out that the PPB did not propose rivals in certain constituencies or knowingly registered candidates that would not have a chance of winning against former deputies of the Party of Regions (PoR). “For these candidates the main thing is to be close to the powers that be. And once they win a seat in parliament they will vote by example for the pro-presidential majority, possibly not even joining it,” Bondarenko believes.

Members of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc admit that there is only one problematic constituency – No. 102 in Svitlovodsk (Kirovohrad oblast), where the former head of the Kyiv City Council Oles Dovhiy is running. “The only black spot in this saga is the inconsistency of the elections headquarters against Dovhiy,” candidate of the PPB Mustafa Nayem wrote on this Facebook page.

But even a cursory analysis of the registered candidates allows one to presume that there are many more such “black spots”. Indeed, in Constituency No. 46 (Artemivsk, Donetsk oblast) MP Serhiy Klyuyev of the PoR is running for a seat in parliament, whose main rival is Dmytro Reva, son of the mayor of Artemivsk. Neither the PPB nor the PF made a decision to go up against Klyuyev. In the neighboring constituency with its center in Slovyansk the PPB nominated a non-local resident, adviser to the Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers Oleh Zontov against member of the Opposition Bloc Yuriy Solod, the husband of former minister of social policy Natalia Korolevska. The situation is quite similar in many constituencies in the Luhansk oblast.

The PPB and PF do not have any representatives in constituency No. 100, where the owner of the large agro-industrial group Creative Stepan Berezkin in running. The parties also did not nominate their candidates in constituency No.65, where ex-speaker of the VR Volodymyr Lytvyn is running. However, Lytvyn’s son Ivan is running as a single candidate in the neighboring constituency.

In a conversation with Capital, the source in the headquarters of the pro-presidential political force indirectly made it clear that the absence of worthy rivals among politicians of the old guard in a number of constituencies is the result of agreements with the hope of future support in the parliament.

By the way, even the nomination of a single candidate of the PPB and the PF in constituency No. 135 is at risk of having a weak impact on the chances of Serhiy Kivalov being once again elected a deputy. His rivals are not that influential and the criminal case on bribery of voters opened by the Ministry of Internal Affairs has little chances of success. “The CEC can strike a candidate from the electoral list only after a ruling of a court of lower jurisdiction is passed down, which must be reviewed by an appellate court. This takes no less than a month,” member of the Central Election Commission Oleksandr Shelestov told Capital.