Fatherland party reveals top candidates for elections

The Fatherland party, led by former Prime Minister and
political prisoner Yulia Tymoshenko, announced at a June 10 party congress its
Top Five candidates for its closed party list. It will be led by Tymoshenko,
Donbas industrial owner Serhiy Taruta, former Security Service of Ukraine (SBU)
Head Valentyn Nalyvaychenko, longtime member of Parliament Serhiy Sobolev, and
women’s advocate and public relations expert Olena Kondratiuk. Tymoshenko told
the congress she is willing to form a parliamentary coalition with The People’s
Servant and won’t be in opposition to it, striking a position contrary to the
European Solidarity party led by former President Poroshenko. She has also
indicated her intention to serve as prime minister. The Fatherland party has
declared its support for Euro-Atlantic integration, but has opposed IMF
cooperation, especially proposals to bring household natural gas prices to
market levels and launch a farmland market.

Recall, half of the Ukrainian parliament’s seats will
be determined by voting for closed party lists, in which the party leaders
select the rank of candidates on its ballot. A party needs to surpass the 5%
threshold to qualify. The other half of seats will be determined by single-mandate
districts, in which individual candidates compete, often as members of parties,
for the highest result in a geographic area. A party’s Top Ten electoral list
is important because it reveals what types of policies will be pursued by a
party, and who will have the most influence. The list often includes a few
celebrities to draw wider interest.

Zenon Zawada: With this closed election list, the Fatherland party is trying to
appeal to Ukrainians of all regions, including the east (Taruta has much support
in Mariupol) and the west (Nalyvaychenko is still popular in Lviv). Yet it’s
less important than for other parties because its success depends entirely on
the charisma of its founder and leader, Tymoshenko. She still has the
reputation of a fighter for Ukraine’s pensioners and destitute, having provided
for them state financing in the form of populist programs when serving as prime
minister in the past. It’s this political capital that she earned with the
older generation that will enable the party to likely return to parliament.
Fatherland has the support of 7.8% of decided voters, according to a poll,
released on June 10, that was conducted between May 26 and June 7 of 2,021
respondents by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.