Ukraine heads towards messy, unclear election finish

Analysis

A second round is already pencilled in for April 21. It will involve two of the three leading candidates: President Petro Poroshenko, opposition candidate Yulia Tymoshenko and outsider Volodymyr Zelensky (see UKRAINE: Many candidates but few real choices in vote - February 13, 2019.)

All opinions polls now show Zelensky ahead of the rest, although his lead may be diminishing. Poroshenko appears to have overtaken Tymoshenko's earlier advantage and pushed her into third place (see UKRAINE: Presidential rivals face spoiler candidate - February 1, 2019).

An opinion poll conducted on March 16 among 164,000 respondents by the Advanced Legal Initiatives group gave Zelensky 34% of the vote, Poroshenko 14% and Tymoshenko 13%. A later but smaller (2,000-respondent) poll by the SOCIS agency showed Zelensky with 21% of the vote, Poroshenko with 13% and Tymoshenko with 10%.

That points to a Zelensky-Poroshenko contest in the run-off. The arithmetic suggests Zelensky would win, but voters may prove more fickle than their reported intentions suggest, and not just because of unreliable polling.

Zelensky's support base is primarily among young voters, whose turnout in past elections has been low. By contrast, the core electorates of Tymoshenko and even Poroshenko are more likely to turn out in reasonable numbers.

The campaign has not seen public debates, at least none involving the top candidates and aired on major TV channels. Some smaller channels do run debates but these are normally among second- or third-tier candidates.

Tymoshenko's campaign paid the most (2.9 million dollars) for her TV advertising in January-February. Poroshenko paid 2 million dollars and Zelensky does not feature among the top five spenders, according to the Chesno fair elections campaign group. Numerically, Yury Boyko, representing pro-Russia forces, had more campaign advertisements screened on TV than any other candidate, followed by Poroshenko and, some way behind, Zelensky and Tymoshenko.

Zelensky avoids public exposure in live formats. Instead of holding election rallies, he has continued touring with comedy shows in which he offers lively social commentary, although he has recently begun to make statements calling for conflict resolution and economic improvements.

Free but flawed

The election campaign has thrown up claims of vote-buying and other forms of manipulation, which will erode the results' legitimacy if a winning candidate's victory is narrow and contested.

Multiple candidates

The sheer number of runners -- a record 39 after five withdrawals -- is the first of many complicating factors.

Standing as a candidate is not something anyone would do on a whim: the registration fee is more than 90,000 dollars.

The conclusion has to be that at best, many candidates see an opportunity to promote their political or business brands for the future. At worst, they may have been funded to confuse and divide voters, especially supporters of better-known contenders.

There are, for example, two Y Tymoshenkos -- Yulia and Yury. They even have the same middle name. Yury Tymoshenko insists he is a genuine candidate.

Vote-buying claims

Political parties backing the main candidates -- Poroshenko Bloc members and Tymoshenko's Batkyvschina -- have traded accusations of buying votes.

Tymoshenko struck the first blow in mid-February, when she accused Poroshenko's campaigners of planning to pay 1,000 hryvnias each (37 dollars) to about 6 million voters. Batkyvschina filed a complaint with the interior ministry; it is unclear whether action has been taken.

The Poroshenko camp responded in kind within two days. The Security Service and the prosecutor-general's office, both loyal to Poroshenko, announced they had uncovered an attempt to buy votes across the country by a candidate who was also building a network of paid campaign workers, which is illegal.

They did not name the offending candidate, but the press immediately labelled the alleged scheme Tymoshenko's 'electoral pyramid system'.

Electoral 'gifts'

The election has been accompanied by a surge in social payments, which could be mistaken for indirect bribery.

The payments are unique and go beyond customary wage increases:

• The government is paying a one-off sum to pensioners, worth roughly two minimum monthly pension payments. Payable in March and April, the money is supposed to be part of a back-indexation for 2015-16, when increases could not be made for fiscal difficulties.
• The authorities have started making discrete monetary payments to people eligible for subsidies after utility prices were increased.

Police and paramilitaries

Interior Minister Arsen Avakov has made a point of saying the police are entirely neutral. This is significant given the law enforcement agencies' history of assisting incumbent leaders in elections.

Avakov's critics take his assurances as a sign he is tacitly siding with Tymoshenko. That impression was strengthened in early February, when police stepped in just before a Tymoshenko rally in central Kyiv and detained a small but organised group planning to protest against her.

Poroshenko has faced repeated harassment by the National Corps, an ultra-nationalist paramilitary movement that grew out of volunteer units fighting in the east in 2014-15 and at that point appeared to have Avakov's blessing.

National Corps members have appeared regularly at Poroshenko's rallies, trying to disrupt them and provoke clashes with police.

Defence scandal

Poroshenko has suffered some damage from a case not overtly connected with the electoral process.

In late February, a report by investigative journalists aired on a major opposition TV channel described a corrupt scheme to buy defence-sector components from Russia, smuggle them in and sell them at a mark-up to companies within Ukroboronprom, the state-owned arms manufacturing corporation.

There was no suggestion Poroshenko was implicated, but the scheme was said to have been managed by Ihor Hladkovsky, using the connections of his father Oleh Hladkovsky, a former business associate of Poroshenko who was deputy head of the National Security and Defence Council, and chairman of a government commission responsible for defence cooperation and exports (see UKRAINE: Scandal threatens to overwhelm Poroshenko - March 5, 2019).

The government has been vulnerable to claims by nationalist critics that the army was underfunded and poorly equipped for the war in eastern Ukraine. Stealing from the arms industry, apparently with Russian connivance, is obviously particularly egregious.

Under pressure, Poroshenko first suspended and then dismissed Oleh Hladkovsky and ordered a comprehensive audit of Ukroboronprom. Prosecutor-General Yury Lutsenko has taken up the case against Ihor Hladkovsky.

Tymoshenko has seized on the issue as the basis for impeachment proceedings (see UKRAINE: Candidates turn to recriminations - February 27, 2019). Poroshenko's election chances must have been dented, but he is still ahead of Tymoshenko, and so may not have been fatally wounded.