Ukraine: Halloween elections

On the night of Halloween, Ukrainians summed up the results of the first elections in this cadence: on October 31, in all the large and small cities of Ukraine (except Kyiv), they chose mayors and deputies in local councils. Elections in Kyiv were canceled ahead of time. This is a separate story, but briefly the plot of it is as follows: in the capital, the ruling party does not yet have strong candidates or a serious rating, to give the capital to the other people's hands (whether it was a sworn rival Yulia Tymoshenko or simply unknown who has already happened when Kiev’s “spite the conductor” was chosen twice Leonid Chernovetsky) The new government was not ready.

The question of the day was obvious: whether the Party of Regions (President of Yanukovych) would be able to become a “total power”, or, as other Russian journalists formulated, whether the party of regions will become Ukrainian “User”. In principle, for everyone who followed the situation calmly and unbiased, the answer was just as obvious: no, will not. In general, the Ukrainian situation is the good that everything is much more complicated and interesting here than in Russia. Some of the results of yesterday’s elections were quite expected, some were surprised, and some winners are still not defined, and it seems that this will be a long judicial story. The most remarkable thing is that the last “unlucky picture” happened in the second largest Ukrainian city in Kharkov. If we recall that there were no elections in the first city, then this is significant.

In fact, it was in Kharkov that this time the main intrigue of the Ukrainian elections concentrated, the favorite title of local media was: "The fate of Ukrainian democracy is decided in Kharkov." Here, the opposition, in fact, put up a strong candidate: against Gennady Kernes, who is from now on the "man Yanukovych", the former "Orange Governor", "Our Yushchenko" Arseny Avakov spoke. Now he was walking from the "Fatherland", and political journalists prone to simplification preferred to call him the "man of Tymoshenko." In order to better highlight the “dynamics” of the Ukrainian political picture, I remind you that several years ago the current irreconcilable rivals were associates in the party (now it doesn’t matter) and business. Today everything has been divided, and much more complicated and more interesting than in a simple black and white “layout”: “Yanukovych’s man” against “Tymoshenko’s man”. Firstly, Kharkov is truly traditionally a “white-blue” city, and here, as a rule, they vote for the “regions”. Secondly, the Kernes and the “regionals” have admin resources. But at the same time, Kernes has an odious reputation, and Avakov has a popular person. And thirdly, this is the most interesting: the confrontation passes not only and not so much along the Yanukovych-Tymoshenko line, but the internal party opposition along the Yanukovych line. Kharkov (as, by the way, Donetsk) in this campaign demonstrated the confrontation within the Party of Regions itself: the group of Yanukovych here is opposed by the Akhmetov-Kolenikov group, the Klyuyev group and just local elites. It was they who supported the “opposition candidate” by Avakov in Kharkov.

As a result, according to the results of an independent ectrus GFK Ukraine, Avakov defeated (34.7% versus 30.9% of Kernes). The regionals have their own calculations, they, of course, won Kernes, and this story promises to be long -playing. Even on the eve of the elections to the place and not to the place of the media, the plot was recalled more than 10 years ago, when Eduard Gurvitz won the mayor of Odessa by a small margin, but the then president of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma was on the side of another candidate, and everything decided ... Naturally, in favor of the President’s Man. By the way, in Odessa this time the Gurvitz (the current mayor) lost to the “regional candidate” to Alexei Kostusev, but lost as an outrageous - a gap of more than 10%. Everyone was not decided by the “people of Kostusev” in the territorial election commission (although they dominated there), but a huge anti -rating (without) the current mayor.

In Lviv, both candidates were somehow connected with the Party of Regions, but Peter Pisarchuk, apparently, was more. Therefore, it was not he who won, but the current mayor Andrei Sadovy. And in the elections to local councils, the Fatherland of the Fatherland was absolutely predictably predictable (about which so much and violently rustled in the last days), but by the radical nationalist “freedom” of Oleg Tyagnibok, in fact, the pocket party of the same “regions”, but the radical electorate does not understand these subtleties. “Freedom” also won in Ternopol and Ivano-Frankivsk, and “Fatherland” in the Rivne, Volyn and Chernihiv regions. Where the regionals won, everything is also not easy at all: this, we repeat, “graters” inside the party, and this situation promises its surprises in the near future.

In general, the “regionals”, even according to the most optimistic estimates, did not take the absolute majority anywhere. In terms of the regions, they lost to the "Fatherland", in some places-"freedom", and in a small but very revealing, "average" in Ukrainian size, the city of Vinnitsa elections won the unknown party "Conscience of Ukraine".



Kyiv