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Yulia Tymoshenko is not yet ready to transfer the wheel of Batkivshchyna to radical boss Oleg Lyashko, photo: Oleg Lyashko’s Facebook page
In political circles, talking about the planned departure of Yulia Tymoshenko from her Batkivshchyna party and politics in general does not stop.
The political force itself reacts to this with a phrase from the well-known anecdote “You will not wait!”, Attributing the appearance of such rumors to the pre-electoral intrigues of the opponents.
In the opinion of Strana’s experts, even the hints of a replacement for the leader are fraught with serious problems, including electoral ones, for parties of the leader type, to which Batkivshchyna undoubtedly belongs. And if she really leaves, the political force is likely to disappear. Bearing in mind that for the majority of voters the Batkivshchyna party is about Tymoshenko. And they vote for it, and not for any particular ideology.
However, major personnel changes can occur in the party.
Details are in the article “Countries”.
Skype leadership
Batkivshchyna turned out to be one of the few parliamentary political forces that has yet to hold a pre-election congress. Formally, the decision on the party’s participation in local elections was made by its highest governing body, the political council on September 4. According to the official statement, “Batkivshchyna” will be represented by more than 45,000 candidates for local council deputies, as well as 1,500 candidates for the post of city, rural and settlement chiefs. Your official nomination will take place at local party conferences.
The reason for replacing the party congress with a modest 53-person political council meeting is obvious (though not publicized). Batkivshchyna boss Yulia Tymoshenko became seriously ill with coronavirus. She greeted members of the same group using a video link. The meeting was chaired by her first deputy in the party, head of the executive secretariat of the political council and her trusted ally Ivan Kirilenko.
Timoshenko’s temporary abandonment of politics, explained by illness, nevertheless revived the discussion, at least outside of Batkivshchyna, sure, if there will be life in this party if it is left without this leader. “Batkivshchyna” is really difficult to imagine without Tymoshenko. She has been the head of the party since its founding in 1999, and has been its face in all subsequent elections.
According to political scientist Ruslan Bortnik, many Batkivshchyna voters have a clear link between the political force and Tymoshenko. “Without it, not even half of the party’s electorate will be left. Come out suddenly, without Tymoshenko’s preparation, the party will definitely collapse,” Bortnik tells Strana.
Hypothetically reasoning, a long-term and hardcore leader like Tymoshenko would have to carefully prepare his departure if he wanted to keep the party going.
“One scenario is to remain a formal leader, handing over the reins of government to someone, or even the moral authority in the party. This would slightly depreciate the situation during self-resignation. Although there will be a destabilizing effect on the electorate, and it will be necessary explain that leaving is a necessity, but this is – the same party. The other is to bring in a successor for years, have him with you and get the voters used to him, “argues Bortnik.
According to him, in theory, conversations on this topic may even benefit Tymoshenko, since they allow to check the possible reaction to such changes. “I do not exclude that the party even played with rumors to prove the consequences of such a scenario,” says the political scientist. But at the same time, he admits that the rumors were originally the pre-election technology of Batkivshchyna’s opponents, who took advantage of Tymoshenko’s illness.
The media and social networks partly reacted to them. “Batkivshchyna has good starting positions, in the last local elections to regional councils, he won in many regions. Rivals could well take advantage of the fact of the disease and try to confuse voters of Tymoshenko’s party with rumors about his departure, they say. , why vote for her if the leader is all gone anyway “, believes Bortnik.
In “Batkivshchyna” they insist on that background. “They (opponents – Ed.) Want to bring doubts to the ranks of our supporters,” Andrei Pavlovsky, a member of the party’s political council, a popular deputy from previous calls, commented to “Strana”.
He himself links the filler to the recent press conference of party deputy Sergei Vlasenko in Lviv, where he harshly criticized Poroshenko.
“Vlasenko called Poroshenko a false patriot, who is no longer interested in Ukraine, but in his own pocket. And the next day, on the websites used by Poroshenko during the presidential campaign as drainage barrels, information about Tymoshenko’s departure appeared, which the gun looters began to disperse. Apparently, Pyotr Alekseevich was offended, especially since this press conference took place before his visit to the city in order to present the deputy of his town Sinyutka as a candidate for mayor, “says Pavlovsky.
“Tymoshenko cannot leave politics, because he is politics. He will survive many new faces. They will also be forgotten, as they have forgotten similar ones before, and Tymoshenko remains an important political figure,” said a member of the Batkivshchyna faction.
One of the people’s deputies also confirmed to “Strana” that there is no talk of Tymoshenko’s departure. “Poroshenko is spreading this rumor. We don’t even have a clue of this. And judge for yourself, this is Tymoshenko’s party. If she leaves, the project will also cease to exist very quickly,” the deputy said.
Political scientist Kost Bondarenko does not believe in Tymoshenko’s resignation. According to him, for the Batkivshchyna leader, politics has become a modus vivendi, that is, a way of life, in contrast to the singer Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, who rejected the mandate of a two-call MP and left politics. “This is a person, perhaps the only one of the politicians who has become so merged with the political process that he was even ready to go to jail, but left no political ambitions, something does not look much like Svyatoslav Vakarchuk,” Bondarenko wrote in your Facebook page. …
Lyashko and Lyashko’s plans
The rumor about Tymoshenko, however, is not the only one that Batkivshchyna has to fight back. Tymoshenko openly supported the leader of the Radical Party, Oleg Lyashko, in the midterm elections in electoral district No. 208 in the Chernihiv region, with whom he noisily broke pots.
As “Strana” wrote, the rapprochement of politicians after the high-profile scandals stems from their relationship with influential businessman Rinat Akhmetov. Tymoshenko has also been on good terms with the latter recently. And Lyashko has long been in the political cage of the country’s greatest oligarch.
Rumors in the political party have already signed Lyashko into the Batkivshchyna faction, although he still needs to win, of course. In addition, they say, and some even publicly, such as, for example, former attorney general Yuriy Lutsenko, that the radical chief will receive the post of chairman of the Batkivshchyna political council, despite the fact that such a post does not even exist in the party hierarchy. “Homeland” at Lyashko’s expense, according to Lutsenko, should increase its electorate, as it is to some extent similar.
If this happens, it will reinforce the rumor that Akhmetov’s influence in Batkivshchyna became decisive, as in the case of Lyashko himself, who entered the orbit of the Donetsk oligarch at the eighth convocation of the Rada.
Andrei Pavlovsky, a member of the Batkivshchyna political council, admits that Lyashko will join the party’s faction. “I think he assumed certain obligations to support Tymoshenko in these elections. Perhaps, when he comes to the Verkhovna Rada, he will join the Batkivshchyna faction,” he predicted to the “Strana.” “.
However, another interlocutor from the Batkivshchyna faction refutes Lutsenko’s assumption of a position for Lyashko on the party’s political council.
At the same time, completely different sources agreed on the claim that Lyashko’s requests were too great for Tymoshenko’s political forces. “He wanted to take his people to the governing bodies, and take some areas for himself. His appetites – be healthy. As far as I know, they (” Homeland “and Lyashko – Ed.) did not agree on further cooperation in the Rada if Oleg wins in the constituency, “says an interlocutor close to Tymoshenko’s party.
But what is interesting: simultaneously with the rumors about the deepening of ties with Akhmetov, information emerged that before the local elections, Tymoshenko transferred the right to vote from the party, at least in some regions, to people from the competing countryside. with the Donetsk oligarch.
Apparently, in the Cherkasy region, the lists of the local Batkivshchyna cell will be overseen by the head of the regional party organization For the Future (ZB), a member of the parliamentary group of the same name in the Rada, Anton Yatsenko.
In Sumy – his colleague in the group Igor Molotok, in Dnepropetrovsk – deputy of the eighth convocation Andrei Shipko, who was a member of the depop group “Vidrodzhennya”. Both the ZB and Vidrozhdennya belong to the sphere of influence of businessman Igor Kolomoisky, whose financial-industrial group (FIG) competes with Akhmetov’s FIG. In this case, this means the formation of another political column of the Dnieper oligarch together with the ZB controlled by him, which has launched a stormy campaign.
For Tymoshenko, this could be an attempt at diversification with the help of former political partner Kolomoisky. But only the elections will show whether you can trust these two pillars reliably.
But in any case, it is still obvious that he is not retiring.
