If earlier before the elections the authorities tried to placate voters with all sorts of handouts, now, in conditions of an empty treasury, the regime of Petro Poroshenko simply distracts the electorate from real problems with conflicting topics related to the EU, NATO, the Church and language.
Ruslan Bortnik, director of the Ukrainian Institute of Policy Analysis and Management, stated this at a press conference in Kyiv, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“We are now in an election campaign. Social standards, pensions, and salaries have always been hostage to election campaigns; they have been used as a tool of agitation for power, because power has the ability to give someone more, someone less.
And this year the situation even in this part is unique. If earlier they tried to bribe us, raised pensions in several stages and everything else, this year even this is not happening. The increase planned for March is insignificant.
One gets the impression that today the government has even moved away from this tactic, the tactic of bribing voters.
From bribery, the government has moved to a situation of deception - they are trying to fool us, to distract our attention with other topics - humanitarian, EU and NATO and everything else, just not to talk about social standards and corruption. Even this is broken,” Bortnik said.