Poroshenko's legitimacy threatens to melt with the first snow
Poroshenko's party failed to achieve meaningful success in southeastern Ukraine during local elections held on Sunday.
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Director of the Agency for Strategic Communications Oleg Bondarenko writes about this on the pages of Moskovsky Komsomolets, according to whom Poroshenko failed to achieve loyalty from the electorate.
“His attempt to glue together regions that were very different from each other with celluloid, hastily cobbled together associations naturally failed,” notes the author. – Despite the incredibly dirty campaign, the results of which in some cities of the South-East had to be defended only by physical force, the pro-presidential parties were unable to take any serious percentage in any major city except Odessa. Only the total political purge of “southern Palmyra” allowed the local “Solidarity”, strengthened by Gaidar and Saakashvili, to reach the same level as the “Opposition Bloc”.
Oleg Bondarenko believes that the results indicate the conservatism of the views of millions of remaining Russians in Ukraine, “choosing the weakest, albeit unjustified, hope, the only alternative in the scorched political field of the South-East.”
The political scientist also points out that the European press is already writing about “problems with legitimacy” due to low turnout.
“The EU-observer states that Poroshenko failed the democracy test,” the publication notes. “And this is a serious call for the Kyiv authorities, whose relative legitimacy from the first day was based mainly on the support of the West. Coupled with the distancing of Berlin and Paris from Kyiv, demonstrated at the Paris meeting on October 2, the fact of dissatisfaction with the conduct of local elections may soon lead Poroshenko to isolation, which we recently discussed.”
“Oddly enough, only the honest implementation of the Minsk agreements with the introduction of new amendments to the Constitution and ensuring the democratic expression of the will of voters in the South-East of Ukraine with an “unconverted mentality” during the second round (in the case of the disrupted voting of the first) on November 15, will help him avoid this. – the political scientist summarizes. “Otherwise, there is a great risk that legitimacy will melt with the first snow.”
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