War-scarred Ukraine votes for pro-Western future
The snap general election is also expected to reveal the level of trust in President Petro Poroshenko’s bid to hold on to the separatist east through talks with pro-Russian rebels and their alleged puppet masters in the Kremlin.
- PHOTOS
A girl walks past booths at a polling station in Kyiv on Oct 25, 2014, on the eve of the country’s parliamentary elections. (AFP/Vasily Maximov)
KYIV: War-weary Ukrainians vote Sunday (Oct 26) for a powerful new parliament in which a likely alliance of pro-Western and nationalist forces will confirm the ex-Soviet country’s historic but bloody break from Russia’s domain.
The snap general election is also expected to reveal the level of trust in President Petro Poroshenko’s bid to hold on to the separatist east through talks with pro-Russian rebels and their alleged puppet masters in the Kremlin. But the trauma of the nearly bankrupt state’s loss to Russia of Crimea and the subsequent deaths of 3,700 people in six months of warfare in the east has set a grim backdrop to a vote meant to celebrate last winter’s pro-democracy street revolt.
Three days of carnage in Kyiv that claimed the lives of more than 100 demonstrators in February were followed by the flight to Russia of Moscow-backed president Viktor Yanukovych and the start of the most intense East-West standoff since the Cold War. May presidential election victor Poroshenko – an affable chocolate baron who sees Ukraine’s European future guaranteed by a US security pledge – then called an early parliamentary vote to sweep out the last remnants of the old regime.
Voters will primarily be passing judgement on a hotly disputed truce deal Poroshenko struck with Russian President Vladimir Putin in September after a string of battlefield defeats. “No criticism, no matter how acute and painful, will stop me from finding a peaceful way out of the current situation,” Poroshenko stressed on the eve of the vote.
But fears that Poroshenko is effectively caving into the Kremlin by offering rebels limited self-rule in return for peace have spurred the hopes of nationalist parties that reject talks with Russia.
NATIONALIST RESURGENCE
The new parliament will have broad new powers that include the right to name the prime minister and most of his cabinet. Poroshenko’s party is expected to come in first but fall short of a majority and be forced into a coalition with nationalists. That may mean having to adopt a much tougher approach to Russia.
Three or four groups that view Russia as either an existential threat or a foe to be treated with more caution than that shown by Poroshenko are each expected to pick up around 10 per cent of the vote.
The more militant and unpredictable ones include the Radical Party of the populist Oleg Lyashko and former defence minister Anatoliy Grytsenko’s Civil Opposition group.
Poroshenko would instead much prefer to strike an alliance with the People’s Front of current Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk – an ally instrumental in securing a US$27 billion rescue package designed to cut Kyiv’s economic dependence on Moscow.
The vote also marks the first time that Ukraine’s Russian speakers – nearly five million of whom live in occupied Crimea or rebel-held eastern regions that will boycott the polls – will have no separate representation in parliament.
Yanukovych’s old ruling party has re-branded itself as the moderate Opposition Bloc focused on social issues. Some of his associates have also joined the small Strong Ukraine group of Sergiy Tigipko – a one-time Russian ally who now backs closer EU ties.
The veteran Communist Party may fail to clear the five percent threshold for winning seats under proportional representation, which fills half the chamber, for the first time since the Soviet era.
A handful could still win individual seats in the first-past-the-post constituency races that fill the other half of the chamber. Sunday’s election will be followed a week later by a rival leadership vote in rebel-held regions that Poroshenko has unsuccessfully urged Putin to denounce.
– AFP