KYIV – President Petro Poroshenko vouched to “anchor” European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) membership in Ukraine’s Constitution and indicated he is likely to run for re-election next year in his fourth news conference as the head of state.
“During a time when anti-European political forces raise their heads who strive for revenge, the amendments… could be insurance for any surprises and imperatives for the years ahead,” he said on February 28 at Kyiv’s Mystetskyi Arsenal cultural center.
Regarding next year’s March 31 presidential elections, Ukraine’s fifth president said that he’ll decide whether to run for re-election once the campaign starts.
Given that he is currently in second place in public opinion polls behind populist former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the president said, “Ratings don’t concern me… those who care about ratings are populists… I’ve never lost a political race… I am a candidate.”
Popular rock star Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, who is currently a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, is a potential dark horse in the race, political scientist Taras Berezovets of Berta Communications told The Ukrainian Weekly.
Low approval ratings among all leading politicians leaves room for a “Macron” to appear in the political landscape, he said, referring to France’s youngest president, Emmanuel Macron, who was elected last year at age 39.
Other possible candidates include Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, the twice former head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), and Anatoliy Hrytsenko, a former defense minister, according to the political consultant.
“Should Vakarchuk lose a presidential race, he most definitely will win seats in the October 2019 parliamentary elections on the back of his popularity,” Mr. Berezovets said, alluding to a potential political party.
On renewing a $17.5 billion financing program with the Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF), the president said that cooperation with the institution is based on “compromise” and that he “won’t allow anybody to dictate something to us,” in terms of the lender’s conditions, which include the long-promised establishment of an anti-graft court.
“Not normally (how) the IMF works… sorry… not sure he [Poroshenko] understands that Ukraine is borrowing money from the Fund,” commented Timothy Ash, a London-based senior emerging markets sovereign strategist for Bluebay Asset Management Company, in an e-mailed note.
A day later, on March 1, Ukraine’s legislature passed the president’s version of the anti-corruption court bill in the first of two readings.
It doesn’t comply with the recommendations of the EU’s constitutional advisory body, the Venice Commission, to which the IMF has aligned its requirement, however. Parliament also delayed a vote to confirm a new central bank governor – Yakiv Smoliy – until mid-March, another IMF requirement to continue shoring up the ailing banking industry. He has been temporarily in charge for almost a year.
“This suggests still lots of horse trading in the background going on, and passes a non-IMF compliant anti-corruption court,” Mr. Ash said. “It is likely to be trench warfare. I am asking myself are these guys serious?”
On war and defense, Mr. Poroshenko said he filed a new bill on national security that envisions more civilian control over the army and security forces.
He also said that he expects to see the “first supply” of defensive weapons from the U.S. “in a few weeks.”
The president also spoke in favor of having U.N. peacekeepers in the war-torn Donbas: “I will do all possible to deploy the peacekeepers, because as of today it’s the only option that would stop the killing of Ukrainians and reinstall Ukrainian sovereignty in the occupied Donbas.”
As an oligarch himself worth $1 billion, Mr. Poroshenko said he doesn’t take orders from the nation’s richest businessmen, who still run much of the economy and main media outlets.
“A nation-state cannot fight with somebody in particular,” he said in the two-hour news conference titled “Challenges 2018.” “I don’t intend to do that and frown upon it should someone in particular, no matter what that person’s name is – [Ihor] Kolomoisky, [Rinat] Akhmetov, [Dmytro] Firtash, [Serhiy] Kurchenko, wherever they may be… I declare: none of them has any kind of influence on the post of the president.”
When asked by a journalist from Detektor Media, a media watchdog, how he feels living as a rich man in an extremely poor country where the average monthly salary is below $400, Mr. Poroshenko said he didn’t want to talk about his personal life.
“I don’t want to discuss my life, but trust me it’s not sweet,” he said.
Earlier he said the government has done all it could in the last four years to improve the lives of Ukrainians amid war with Russia and after inheriting a hollow treasury and a depleted public administration corps.
“Yes, we renewed economic growth,” the president said. “Two plus percent growth in gross domestic product [last year] – this, of course, is better than 15 minus [in 2014-2015], isn’t it? It’s clear though that the achieved tempo isn’t categorically accepted and is insufficient.”