[ad_1]
Voter votes in local elections on October 25 (Photo: REUTERS / Valentyn Ogirenko)
Local elections were held in Ukraine on October 25. Radio NV discovered the nuances of this vote.
Political scientist Mykola Davidyuk spoke about the nuances of the 2020 local elections in Ukraine in an interview with Radio NV.
– In fact, if an electoral cut is made, the elections were not slow. In fact, a large number of regional parties, regional elites, despite last year’s boom and Vladimir Zelensky’s electoral revolution, were able to remain in their places, and some even new ones appeared.
– In general, the results of the Servant of the People in the country resemble something very stable for Ukraine, which the ruling party always gets around 11.5%. Are we really experiencing this same phenomenon?
– No, I think this is a slightly different phenomenon. This is a drop in Zelensky’s own ratings, a drop in interest in him. Because even «referendum ”failed to multiply his party’s ratings on the ground and direct the electoral stream.
Any referendum or opinion poll, follow-up that Zelensky had proposed last year to the MP, after the MP, even before the New Year, would have been greeted with a bang, and in fact people would have queued to polling stations and voted. as they would have been told. Here, even the hidden turmoil did not give him a chance to strengthen his party, so there will be a certain distance from him.
I already see a connection with the 90s, with the 2000s, in particular with Kuchma, who turned away from the failed parties and tried to show himself as the president of the whole country, he had a director of the entire parliament. These patterns are similar, but the electoral motive is slightly different. This is just an organic drop in interest in the Servant of the People party.
– Are you surprised that, according to exit polls, Alexander Popov, representing the Platform of Opposition – For Life, was ranked second in Kiev? Why? Can this be considered a surprise from the current local elections?
– In Kiev, it will be necessary to keep an eye on the actual final results, as it often happens that some exit polls are shown so that the commissions raise the results to those declared overnight. These manipulations are well known, they are not new and have not been tested in Ukraine for the first time. But there are also good companies that actually show the real numbers, so it is necessary to compare several exit polls at once.
As for Alexander Popov, I think participation influenced here. And his voter was well mobilized. We realized that here it even smells of a certain conspiracy, since for Klitschko this is the most suitable candidate in the second round. No one will vote for the former regionals who participated in the Maidan crackdown. And it is clear that Klitschko is in a very advantageous position here. Although Klitschko did not have enough 2.5% to win in the first round.
– Will the election results affect the interaction between mayors and the president? Will Zelensky now pay tribute to the mayors of the big cities?
– I don’t think leaning is straightforward. However, he has the prosecution and the SBU in his hands. Therefore, it cannot be said that it will lean strongly. As soon as there is a moment when Zelensky will have to turn to the regional elites to bow, he will come up with a television story, according to which he will wonderfully resign. He will not ask. But his political skills allow for such a situation that could happen. This is the first.
Second, according to the situation around regional elites. “Cherkasy Mayor’s Complex”, this protest, is now multiplying and expanding. The local elites felt the force. Zelenskiy, who last year defeated everyone with a single goal, has not been able to retain his political leadership today. His game slipped, and not to second, but immediately to third or fourth place.
Therefore, the protests of the mayors will be tangible, we will see something similar to Brazil, when the regional local elites completely oppose the president, when these local elites are even fighting the coronavirus in their own way, feeling that the president is doing it ineffectively. . Therefore, we will see 100% rebellion from the regions.
I think Zelenskiy’s main task is not even to pay political attention to him. The only thing you should pay attention to is the sovereignty and independence of the State, so that some regions do not think that by winning elections in their cities, they are above the law. And secondly, to see that there is no external factor, when individual mayors will receive an extra payment from their northern neighbor not to carry out a feudal policy, but a separatist one. This threat also remains, so here Zelenskiy must be above the fight, here he must be a referee who must force him to follow the rules.
– We have a situation with Mariupol, where OLLO is in first place, and the Sharia game passed. But if you take the opposite situation, in Ivano-Frankivsk there is great support from the incumbent mayor Martsinkiv and his party. Are Ukrainian cities scattered among themselves, electorally scattered?
– I would say that legally more competent, but less politically competent, a godfather of Vladimir Putin and a former president invested billions in polarizing the country. It is beneficial for both, it brings both moral and aesthetic pleasure. Furthermore, this increases their political weight. Therefore, we have such a dispersed political map on the edges that it practically does not coincide on the right and left margins.
– And in a few years we will have absolutely the same image in the Verkhovna Rada, because the local elections are like a rehearsal for the general elections?
– In fact, the results showed that Zelensky is beginning to be “lame Duck. “This usually happens in the fourth year with any president, and for Zelensky it happened after the local elections. The team that established the strategy just failed. And now we see it has failed “Referendum”, attempts to manipulate economic zones. Even counting them, if you see the actual numbers, I think it is even more insignificant.
Questions about the use of nuclear weapons are also unclear. If it is a Khrushchev-style bluff, we can quickly be left without any Western partners. These games have led to the fact that the microclimate of the country is changing. The protests of the regions, the protests of the flanking parties, we see how much more frivolous Poroshenko began to behave, the statements became sharper. Therefore, we can already see in the near future a minimum – a change in the Cabinet, and a maximum – in the early spring parliamentary elections.
– Can we say that these elections show the beginning of the death of mastodons like the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc? Yulia Tymoshenko herself always stood her ground, and It had very strong party cells and now they are weak as a result.
– I think Tymoshenko has a presidential or prime ministerial ambition, rather than maintaining a powerful wave of regional elites. Despite the rumors about the possible purchases and sales of these cell phones from the same party, Maybach car lovers. That is, it can theoretically be explained by this.
I think that in the presidential elections he can take his 6-7%. That is, it lives as an image. Although I believe that these elections will give the regions a good constellation of new women leaders, who can then escalate to the national ones. First.
Second, look at how Vereshchuk campaigned. Again, this is a copy of Tymoshenko’s image. I mean, it also washed a bit. And most importantly, these are the candidates that were hired. Not all of them had biographies that correspond to the party, and this only led to the fact that they simply did not approve.
– They say turnout was too low. Why?
– Actually, there is no disaster. I am pleasantly surprised by the high turnout. I predicted less turnout due to the coronavirus, but conscious people understand that for the next five years they will live with this power, that they will elect, then people went and voted. In a pandemic, 37% is more than a good result. This is the first moment.
Second, a large number of local elections are held in Europe with an average of 18-25%. Several television programs spoke of illegitimacy. It seems to me that this is not true. There is legitimacy, provided by the Constitution, where the lowest level of recognition is not established. That is, even if only 5% of them came, it would be legal. And 37% is more than enough, that is why I think it is the elected mayors who have the confidence to carry out their electoral programs. The most important thing is that they comply, and that they do not rush to raid land and large city budgets and OTG budgets, which have grown exponentially due to decentralization.
– Regarding the billboards of Mr Palchevsky, which were hung in the Odessa and Nikolaev regions, and in Kherson, and on the roads. I mean, this is a lot of money invested in the campaign, and in the end «nothing. “What is it and why was it necessary to spend millions, and perhaps tens of millions of dollars to get such a zero?
– I think it was an attempt to scale Palchevsky’s image wherever Channel 112 shows it, in order to create a national party from this for possible parliamentary elections. Now, according to exit polls, it seems that so far this plan has failed and possibly even in Kiev.
But in Kiev they will continue to count: Klitschko may have more and Palchevsky’s party may have more. Both can win. But this question now depends on the calculation of the commission. I think more decisions are made there now than yesterday in the polling stations.
Subscribe to our podcasts on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and the MEGOGO platform
