Zelenskiy says he’s willing to debate Poroshenko

As his reaction to his commanding first-place finish
in Ukraine’s presidential elections, comedian and actor Volodymyr Zelenskiy
thanked his supporters on Election Day for not “voting as a joke,” a reference
to his critics who used that very phrase to refer to voting for him. Among the
few concrete comments he offered, Zelenskiy told the tvrain.ru news site that
he’s not interested in working with the old politicians if he’s elected
president. In response to the president’s claim that day that he’s a puppet of
oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, Zelenskiy posed the rhetorical question to Poroshenko
of whether he’s a puppet to Oleh Hladkovskiy, the defense official who is
alleged to have organized illicit schemes acquiring Russian military parts and
reselling them at inflated prices to the Ukrainian military. Zelenskiy told
journalists at his campaign headquarters that he’d be willing to debate
Poroshenko, adding that he will announce his political team ahead of the
second-round runoff.

In his remarks after polling stations closed,
Poroshenko reached out to Zelenskiy’s voters to consider voting for him in the
runoff, urging them that “the point of no return hasn’t been reached.”
Addressing those younger than 30 years old, he called for a deep and meaningful
dialogue with those whom he couldn’t convince in the first round. “You see the
changes in the country, but you want for them to be deeper and quicker,” he
said. “I fully share your desire. For changes to be of quality, we should unite
to achieve this and not waste time. I fully understand the motives of your
dissatisfaction, I have heard you and I plead with you to hear me.”

Zenon Zawada: Poroshenko
has already revealed the essence of his campaign strategy for the next three
weeks, sounding the cataclysmic themes in his March 31 remarks of an
approaching “point of no return” and warning that “we can lose everything that
we did for the last five years,” as he told a post-election press conference.
These attempts to appeal to the fears of the public didn’t work for the first
round, but they might have a bigger effect in the runoff. A campaign
strategist, Oleh Medvedev, told journalists the Poroshenko staff sees a large
reserve of serious voters that it can still tap for the runoff. Indeed tapping
these voters might be the only hope that Poroshenko has to win the second
round, given the public has largely shown it has lost its confidence in
him. 

Repeatedly calling for a debate, Poroshenko’s
campaign staff is confident that it will work to the president’s advantage. But
while the public understands the president is more well versed in the demands
of international politics and especially warfare, Zelenskiy could successfully
use the debate to call into question the president’s moral character and
commitment to the country as a whole, themes that would resound widely in
society. So a debate could either make or break whatever chances the president
has left for re-election as part of that attempt to appeal to serious voters.