Poroshenko, Klitschko, Yatsenyuk unite forces for October vote

The Solidarity Petro Poroshenko Bloc held a party congress on Aug. 28 during which it formally absorbed the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform (UDAR) party led and founded by Vitali Klitschko. The congress elected as its party chairman Klitschko, who currently serves as mayor of Kyiv and is seeking re-election to a five-year term on Oct. 25.

The People’s Front party led by Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk will not compete in the October local elections, instead fielding its candidates under the Solidarity party, Yatsenyuk confirmed on Aug. 28. The Solidarity party expects the People’s Front will eventually merge and dissolve itself, just as UDAR had, said on Aug. 28 Yuriy Lutsenko, a top Solidarity party leader.

Zenon Zawada: For someone dismissed as not the sharpest bulb in Ukrainian politics, Klitschko is making all the right moves. Klitschko’s decision to merge with the president’s party, and thereby gain its administrative backing for the October mayoral vote, virtually ensures that he will remain as Kyiv mayor until 2020. That will give him five years to prove whether he’s a presidential contender, or launch a new political party in case Poroshenko’s Solidarity project derails. On the other hand, if Poroshenko’s presidential term is successful, Klitschko can aim for re-election. It’s a win-win situation for the boxing great.

As for Yatsenyuk, he’s also demonstrated himself to be a slippery, versatile political creature. Rather than fulfilling his prophecy of becoming a kamikaze and crashing in the local elections (with his party’s poll ratings lower than 5 percent), he is preserving himself as a player in the pro-Western establishment by aligning himself with the president in this election. It’s quite possible that he cut a deal with the president to remain as prime minister in exchange for backing away from the local elections. After all, it’s very convenient for Poroshenko to have at his side someone as unpopular as Yatsenyuk.

Though Yatsenyuk has a rivalry with Poroshenko, it’s not anything personal, especially since the president has allowed People’s Front candidates to compete under the Solidarity banner. Indeed Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk have demonstrated the capacity to be “friendly rivals,” as we would call it, and partners when it’s necessary, as with these local elections. The People’s Front party might be on its last legs, but Ukrainian politicians change political parties like socks. Yatsenyuk might have led a kamikaze government, as he labeled it, but he himself will remain a player in Ukrainian politics for a long time, in one capacity or another.