Tymoshenko’s Fatherland party most popular in Ukraine at 11%

The Fatherland party led by former Prime Minister
Yulia Tymoshenko has the most support among the Ukrainian public at 11.2%,
according to a poll conducted by two leading Kyiv think tanks. Fatherland is a
pro-EU populist party. The Poroshenko Bloc, the president’s patronage party,
would earn 9.3% of those likely to vote, while the Russian-oriented Opposition
Bloc would earn 8.4%. The pro-EU, reform-oriented Civic Position party led by
former Defense Minister Anatoliy Grytsenko would earn 8.3%.  

The Russian-oriented For Life party led by media mogul
Vadym Rabinovych would earn 7.7%, the populist Radical Party led by Oleh
Liashko would earn 7.3% and the pro-EU, Self-Reliance party led by Lviv Mayor
Andriy Sadovyi would earn 5.8%. More than 48% of respondents want early
parliamentary elections to be held. The poll was conducted of 2,018 respondents
by the Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Fund and the Razumkov Center between
June 9 and 13.

Zenon Zawada: It’s
remarkable that the poll ratings of Poroshenko and his party are as low, if not
lower, than any sitting Ukrainian president, yet not a single group of leaders
in the country’s political elite has been able to put together any significant
opposition force. This is partly due to the president’s harsh tactics against
political rivals, as demonstrated with the recent decision to strip Mikheil Saakashvili of his
citizenship. (Saakashvili was in the process of
forming a pro-EU, reforms-oriented opposition force.) The president also
succeeded in depressing public support for Sadovyi’s Self-Reliance party with the garbage scandal
in the city of Lviv. Yet the lack of an opposition force is also related to the
moral bankruptcy of Ukraine’s elite, which has failed to produce a single
political party that is trusted and supported by the public in 25 years of
Ukrainian independence.

The Fatherland party scored political points on its
campaign against the IMF demand to launch the farmland market in Ukraine.
(Ukraine is among the world’s few countries forbidding the trade of farmland.)
Tymoshenko is on pace to become the leading opposition force to Poroshenko in
the 2019 elections. While it will continue to hammer the government on the poor
economic conditions, it remains to be seen whether it will gradually adopt an
appeasement position with Russia to attract eastern and southern Ukrainian
voters. It’s worth noting that the Russian-oriented electorate has risen from
previous polls to over 16% with the emergence of the For Life party (compared
to 41.9% for pro-Western parties).