Zelenskiy, Poroshenko to compete in presidential runoff vote

As widely anticipated, comedian and actor Volodymyr
Zelenskiy will face off against President Petro Poroshenko in the second-round
runoff of the presidential elections scheduled for Apr. 21. Zelenskiy’s
performance is exceeding the forecasts of Ukraine’s polling firms, achieving
30.5% of the vote with 70.0% of ballots counted this morning. He nearly doubled
the result of runner up Poroshenko, who drew 16.2% of votes, less than what the
leading polls were forecasting. Former PM Yulia Tymoshenko has also failed to
match her poll ratings with a third-place result of 13.2% so far.

 

Zelenskiy won first place in 19 out of Ukraine’s 24
non-occupied oblasts (regions) participating in the vote. Poroshenko finished
in first in three regions, located in the country’s west, that have
traditionally voted for NATO integration. Russian-oriented candidate Yuriy
Boyko finished first in the Ukrainian-controlled territories of the Donetsk and
Luhansk regions. Overall, he finished in fourth place at 11.6% as of this
morning. The Russian-occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions
didn’t participate in the vote, nor did the Russian-controlled Crimean
peninsula.

 

Olha Aivazovska, the coordinator of Ukraine’s leading
election monitoring organization, Opora, indicated in her remarks on Election
Day that the vote met international standards. The worst violations were voters
announcing their decisions at polling stations and snapping photos of their
ballots, she said, both of which are serious and hint at vote-buying.
“Fortunately, such violations covered close to 4% of polling stations as a
whole, and the result is truly 1-1.5% higher than we recorded in 2014,” she
said. Voter turnout – estimated at 63.52% by the Central Election Commission –
was 3% higher than the 2014 presidential vote, she said. Meanwhile, the
election campaign was both active and aggressive, she said.

 

As for criminal incidents, National Police Chief
Serhiy Kniazev told a March 31 press conference that the police received 1,927
elections-related complaints, based upon which 31 criminal cases have been
opened and 18 administrative protocols filed. The most common violations were
illegal campaigning, photographing ballots, buying votes, damaging ballots,
false bomb threats and attempts to remove ballots from polling stations, he
said.

 

In Kyiv, the head of a local election commission was
threatened with violence. Meanwhile, voters in the Kyiv region who received
payments from the government – particularly in the city of Vasylkiv – reported
receiving phone calls instructing them to vote properly, the Internal Affairs
Ministry reported. In the Poltava region, a police officer guarding a polling
station was attacked during the night, suffering cranial trauma and a
concussion. In the city of Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region, police confiscated
several hundred copies of ballots with votes marked for Tymoshenko.

 

Zenon Zawada: What would
normally be perceived as an April’s Fools prank is now reality with Zelenskiy
on track to become Ukraine’s next president. If the country had rallied around
Poroshenko in 2014 (having achieved the rare feat in Ukrainian elections of
winning more than 50% of the vote), then now Ukrainians have rallied against
Poroshenko. He has maintained strong support only in those western regions that
have traditionally most hostile to Russia, including the city of Lviv
(Ukraine’s seventh largest). Moreover, nearly half of Tymoshenko’s voters have
been polled to vote for Zelenskiy in the runoff, while all of the voters of the
fourth place candidate (Boyko) will prefer Zelenskiy. Even the fifth place
finisher, the pro-NATO Anatoliy Grytsenko, said he won’t support Poroshenko’s
re-election.

 

Needless to say, Poroshenko has his work cut out for
him in convincing the public to change their minds about him in the next three
weeks. However, we view that task as far easier with Zelenskiy as Poroshenko’s
runoff opponent than if Tymoshenko had finished in second place. She can at
least point to her experience as prime minister, while Zelenskiy has no
governing experience to speak of. He has spent his entire life working in
comedy. No doubt, Poroshenko’s campaign will be playing to the fears of the
public of a prospective Zelenskiy presidency.

 

The most positive development to emerge from these
elections, in our view, is that they look to have met international standards and
the results are reliable, falling in line with estimates provided by the
National Exit Poll, led by the reliable Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Fund.
In this way, the Poroshenko administration has ensured calm and stability in
the country, at least for the time being.

 

As we had expected, the bulk of vote manipulations
occurred in the months leading up to the actual vote, with the Opora monitoring
network confirming the blatant abuse of state resources by the Poroshenko
administration. As expected, the Tymoshenko campaign has already dismissed the
exit polls as “instruments of manipulation,” insisting that she has finished in
second place by their own count. Yet their complaints are falling on deaf ears
as poll figures, before and during the vote, more-or-less reflect the official
tally.