Final count in Ukraine parliamentary vote announced

The final vote count for Ukraine’s parliamentary
elections was announced by the Central Election Commission this morning. The
People’s Servant party, a populist force led by President Volodymyr Zelensky,
earned 43.2% of votes in the closed-list voting. In all, People’s Servant has
254 out of 424 mandates (including both closed list and single-mandate district
voting), enabling it to form the parliamentary majority and Cabinet on its own.

 

The Opposition Platform For Life, a Putinist party led
by natural gas trader Yuriy Boyko and Putin confidante Viktor Medvedchuk,
gained 13.1% and 43 total seats. The Fatherland party, a populist anti-IMF
force led by former PM Yulia Tymoshenko, earned 8.2% of closed-list votes and
26 total seats. European Solidarity, a pro-NATO traditional values party led by
former President Poroshenko, gained 8.1% of votes and 25 total seats. The Voice
party, a pro-NATO neoliberal force, earned 5.8% of votes and 20 total seats.

 

Voter turnout was 49.8%, the lowest ever in a
Ukrainian parliamentary election, widely acknowledged to be owing to many
citizens being away from home, whether on vacation or working abroad.

 

Zenon Zawada: These
elections have brought as dramatic a change to Ukraine’s political landscape as
the events of 2014, which destroyed the ruling, Russian-oriented Party of
Regions. While the EuroMaidan succeeded in eliminating Putin’s main agent of
influence over Ukraine (former President Yanukovych and the defunct Party of Regions),
these elections succeeded in sweeping out most of the Old Guard political class
and business elites from parliament, who were no longer able to implement
effective vote-buying schemes, mass advertisement campaigns or pressure their
employees. The triumph of Zelensky and The People’s Servant party marks a
generational shift in public consciousness in Ukraine comparable to the Soviet
collapse. Some of those elected were either unemployed or hold menial jobs,
such as the wedding photographer who ousted the Motor Sich board chairman
Boguslayev.

 

Zelensky is the youngest-ever president at 41 years,
which is also the average age of an MP in this new parliament, which is seven
years younger than the last convocation. They would have been 13 years old when
the Soviet Union collapsed, young enough to have been a Pioneer scout but not
old enough to have been formed by Komsomol membership, as many of the Old Guard
elites (like former President Viktor Yushchenko, former National Security and
Defense Secretary Oleksander Turchynov, and former Social Policy Minister
Serhiy Tihipko).

 

Zelensky will enjoy the support of a loyal parliament,
a luxury unprecedented for a Ukrainian president since the Constitution was
approved in 1996. Zelensky, his team and his party bear full responsibility for
all that occurs during his presidency. Their goal will be to maintain a
populist course that focuses on pragmatic improvements in the day-to-day lives
of average Ukrainians – in the spheres of judicial, law enforcement, economic,
infrastructure and medical reform – while balancing relations with the West and
Russia.

 

Yet we share the widely held view that Russia will not
allow the Zelensky administration to find this middle road. The Russian
government is interested in Ukraine’s capitulation in the ongoing hybrid war
and absorption into Russia’s sphere of influence and geopolitical structures,
if possible. And Zelensky will face an enormous temptation to capitulate to
Russian demands in exchange for cheap natural gas and an end to warfare, among
his key campaign promises. It’s this Russian pressure that could undermine
Zelensky’s plans for pragmatic reforms domestically.

 

Posing just as much resistance to Zelensky’s plans for
reforms – which he has shown so far to be quite genuine – will be Ukraine’s
entrenched elites, bureaucrats and civil servants, who profit from the nation’s
many illicit schemes and absent rule of law. Zelensky will be able to overcome
his enemies if he maintains the public’s trust by taking dramatic steps in the
first six months of his presidency. High-profile officials will have to be
prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned. Corrupt judges, law enforcement officers
and bureaucrats in all spheres will have to be dismissed in droves. Legislation
will have to be approved dramatically improving business conditions. Road
repair projects will have to accelerate. Indications that he is on this path
already are the State in a Smartphone initiative,
recent investigations of corruption in the defense sphere, the appointment of
Aivaras Abromavicius at Ukroboronprom, and most recently, the July 25 arrest of
the Odesa region’s former police chief and his deputy in a campaign against
contraband.

 

No one knows how this radical political experiment
will end. We can identify a few certainties already: (1) the year’s remainder
will consist of dramatic, destabilizing events as Zelensky has shown he is
willing to engage in dramatic action, (2) these dramatic efforts of Zelensky
and his party will be opposed by both the pro-Russian (explicitly) and
pro-Western parties in parliament (tacitly), and (3) Zelensky will eventually
be forced in the next year to choose between capitulating to Russia or
extending war against Russia, costing him a significant part of his electorate
either way.