Vilkul to represent Opposition Bloc in presidential elections

The remaining members of the Opposition Bloc party
voted at their Dec. 15 party congress to nominate Oleksandr Vilkul as their
presidential candidate in the elections scheduled for March 31, the
Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported. Vilkul built his career serving as an
executive in the mining companies of oligarch Rinat Akhmetov. The Oppsition
Bloc also decided to compete for parliament in the elections scheduled for Oct.
27. Borys Kolesnikov, a close associate to Akhmetov, was elected as the new
party head. Last month, Vadim Novinsky, a business partner to Akhmetov, was
elected its parliamentary faction head after Yuriy Boyko was stripped of that
title and expelled.

The party congress was held despite Boyko having filed
criminal complaints with the police on Dec. 8 alleging it was being held
illegally. The congress also adopted changes to the party statute, actions that
Boyko also complained are illegal. The party website pointed out that the
Justice Ministry didn’t execute the Dec. 12 ruling of a Kyiv district court
that forbid changing the party’s founding documents.

Zenon Zawada: Vilkul
competing for president is negative for Ukraine’s Russian-oriented forces,
which will be increasingly diluted and unable to unite behind a single strong
candidate. Given that the political positions of the Opposition Bloc and
Opposition Platform led by Boyko are almost identical, we expect Vilkul will
merely take votes away from Boyko – the leading Russian-oriented candidate –
rather than draw new voters into the race. The Russian-oriented vote will be
even more diluted if to add Yevgeny Murayev to the mix (who has yet to declare
his presidential candidacy).

A similar result will occur in the parliamentary
elections if the Opposition Bloc doesn’t adopt a revised brand with new political
positions that will attract new support, rather than cannibalize the
Russian-oriented electorate of Boyko’s Opposition Platform. At this point, the
Opposition Bloc’s main image is being the political party of Akhmetov’s
interests with a Russian orientation, having Novinsky among its leaders. That’s
not enough to compete effectively for parliament. Neither is it effective for
the Boyko and Akhmetov groups to be fighting with each other for the remnants
of the once-dominant Party of Regions.