Ukraine’s parliament is something halfway between a wrestling pit and a shady backroom for hatching deals. Optimists believe Sunday’s elections will change all that.
Voting in a fresh batch of deputies, they hope, could kick-start a nation hobbled by endemic corruption and reliant on creaking Soviet-built industry.
A simmering separatist war in the east, however, gives many others little faith in a fresh start. The pessimists argue that the conflict and the threat of Russian aggression have drawn attention away from a much-needed reform agenda.
“Politics seems to be too much in the rather business-as-usual mode, so the hope of rebooting the political system with these elections may be disappointed,” said regional expert Andrew Wilson, author of “Ukraine Crisis: What it Means for the West.”
The Verkhovna Rada, as Ukraine’s single-chamber parliament is known, is a rowdy place at the best of times — a perfect metaphor for a dysfunctional political scene. Debates more often than not descend into shouting matches and sometimes all-out brawls. With the country on the verge of an economic meltdown caused by the war and depleted cash reserves, some reinvention is in order.
This weekend’s ballot is the culmination of a process sparked by February’s ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych in a frenzy of public revolt that turned bloody when snipers began mowing down protesters near Kiev’s iconic Maidan square. The collective disgust at the violence and the scale of the disgraced leader’s venality, which became apparent as Ukrainians discovered his comically pharaonic private residence, fostered a mood of national unity.
President Petro Poroshenko, easily elected to office in May, has harnessed that spirit to the benefit of his eponymous Poroshenko Bloc. Despite the wide field of contenders, some pundits and polls believe the party may garner enough seats in the 450-member legislature to form a government unaided.
Most of Poroshenko Bloc’s rivals share a strongly pro-Western bent. The affection that most Ukrainians once felt for Russia has been soured by Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in March. Attitudes have turned poisonous since the outbreak of an armed separatist insurgency in coal-rich eastern regions that Ukraine and the West say is largely the fruit of Russian meddling.
Yulia Tymoshenko, whose magnetic charisma and trademark blond braids made her the emblem of the 2004 Orange Revolution, has become an ardent champion of Nato membership and her Fatherland party has reasonable prospects.
Belying his tame appearance, Arseniy Yatsenyuk — the bespectacled prime minister and Popular Front party leader — has become the poster boy for tough but necessary economic reforms.
The loudest candidate on the political field is pitchfork-wielding Radical Party frontman Oleh Lyashko, whose brand of brash nationalist populism and lavish campaign spending could lift his group into second place.