Poroshenko campaign makes clean elections promise abroad and at home

Among the achievements of his leadership is that no
one knows who will win the presidential elections scheduled for this spring,
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told the Munich Security Conference on
Feb. 16. “We are not the Russian Federation. In Russia, everyone knows the
answer ahead of time,” Poroshenko said in response to a question on whether he
will win the elections. “My achievement as president is that no one now knows
who will win in Ukraine. This is a symbol of democracy.” At the same time, he
said he expects to achieve “a very good result,” reported the pravda.com.ua
news site.

Poroshenko’s re-election effort will demonstrate to
the public an example of a clean and honest campaign, said on Feb. 15 campaign
head Vitaliy Kovalchuk, as reported by Interfax-Ukraine. Specifically, the
campaign is committed to transparent financing, honest campaigning and clean
tactics, he said. In the week ending Feb. 15, Poroshenko’s re-election campaign
spent UAH 70 mln, or UAH 10 mln per day, campaign staffer Ruslan Kniazevych
told a press conference. These funds are exclusively the president’s personal
money.

About a hundred members of the Civic Position party,
led by presidential candidate Anatoliy Grytsenko, picketed the Presidential
Administration on Feb. 16 to protest alleged vote-buying already occurring.
“Every day, we receive information about Poroshenko’s attempts to buy himself a
second term,” wrote the same day on his Facebook page Yegor Firsov, a member of
the party’s coordinating council. “A large-scale ‘poll’ is being conducted in
all corners of the country, after which people are suggested to sign a
‘personal commitment agreement’ to vote for Poroshenko and receive UAH 1,000.”

Recall, presidential contender Yulia Tymoshenko
alleged that the president has implemented a national vote-buying scheme for
the same amount, with a few such incidents being reportedby the Opora election observing organization. Most recently, a Poroshenko
campaign tent was reported by Opora on Feb. 15 to be collecting the personal
information of voters in the town of Trostianets in the Vinnytsia region. An
Opora observer reported the same practice being conducted by the Tymoshenko
campaign two days earlier in the city of Kherson. In the city of Khmelnytskiy
on Feb. 13, the regional administration (controlled by the president) organized
a gathering of medical personnel to promote the president’s policies and
present local health authorities with new vehicles, Opora said.

Zenon Zawada: We agree with Poroshenko in the sense that it’s impossible to predict
the outcome of the presidential elections. (The first round is scheduled for
March 31, and the second-round runoff for April 21.) But we can offer the
following likelihoods: (1) Poroshenko will use his wide control of state
resources to influence the vote as much as acceptable by global standards (as
is already being evidenced and alleged), (2) the government will determine
Poroshenko to have qualified for the second-round runoff, (3) the president
won’t easily concede power to his opponents, who are his vicious rivals and (4)
the president will resort to extreme measures before conceding defeat (having
already attempted to use the Nov. 25 armed conflict to postpone the elections).