Leading Euro-Atlantic parties reveal top candidates for elections

The European Solidarity party held a party congress on
June 9 at which it revealed its Top Ten candidates on its closed party list. It
is led by former President Petro Poroshenko, Parliamentary Speaker Andriy
Parubiy, Parliamentary First Deputy Speaker Iryna Herashchenko, 81st Airmobile
Brigade Commander Mykhaylo Zabrotskiy, singer Sofiya Fedyna, Presidential
Ombudsman for Crimean Tatar Affairs Mustafa Dzhemilev, Medical Battalion
Commander Yana Zinkevych, former Lviv Regional Administration Head Oleh
Sytniuk, Crimean Tatar Mejlis Deputy Chairman Ahtem Ciygoz, and Deputy PM for European
and Euro-Atlantic Integration Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze. The European
Solidarity favors Euro-Atlantic integration and close IMF cooperation.

The Voice (Holos) party founded by Western-educated
rock star Sviatoslav Vakarchuk held a party congress on June 8 at which it
revealed its Top Ten candidates on its closed party list. It is led by
Vakarchuk, former Economic Development and Trade Minister Yulia Klymenko, IT
executive Kira Rudyk, PM adviser Yaroslav Zhelezniak, Anti-Corruption Action
Centre Board Member Oleksandra Ustinova, Kyiv City Council Member Oleh Makarov,
Transparency International Ukraine Executive Director Yaroslav Yurchyshyn,
journalist Serhiy Rakhmanin, Odesa Regional Administration former acting head
Solomiya Bobrovska, and former Deputy Health Minister Olha Stefanyshyna. The
Voice party favors Euro-Atlantic integration, as well as close cooperation with
the IMF and the Open Society Foundations founded by George Soros.

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: Numerous
parties will be competing for Ukraine’s reliable pro-EU, pro-NATO electorate,
with the best results to be gained by The People’s Servant party (loyal to
Zelensky), Poroshenko’s European Solidarity and Vakarchuk’s Voice party. These
latter two parties will get the strongest results in the Western regions, with
European Solidarity getting the votes of traditional Ukrainians and the Voice
party drawing the neoliberal votes, sympathetic to Soros. Both of these parties
will be ready to pounce on Zelensky and his party if he reaches a peace deal
with Russia, and offers Russia any concessions on Euro-Atlantic integration.

Nationwide, about 8.1% of decided voters are ready to
cast their ballot for European Solidarity, while 5.6% are willing to do so for
Voice, according to a poll conducted between May 26 and June 7 of 2,021
respondents by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. It was published
on June 10.