Opinion polls suggest Petro Poroshenko is on the brink
of becoming Ukraine's new president. If the predications are correct, he may
beat his nearest rival, former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, in the first
round, and avoid the need for a run-off vote on 15 June.
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| Poroshenko meeting with cyclists from VeloMaidan (cyclists currently traveling from Lviv to Odessa) |
Poroshenko's current popularity has been attributed to
him not being one of the three opposition leaders in Yanukovych’s Parliament,
but he was active in Maidan (he purchased food, water and firewoord for
protestors). His business fortune, in the words of an article in the Guardian
today: came not from the murky world of
energy but from something altogether more palatable: chocolate. Further, Poroshenko has been careful not to oppose Russia by saying
that Russia is a partner, not an opponent. And that Maidan is a movement away
from the Soviet Union, not anti-Russia.
According to Luke Harding,
and Oksana Grytsenko in Luhansk, writing for the Guardian: Poroshenko has cast himself as the man who can rescue Ukraine
from its numerous afflictions: break-up, corruption, a rampant shady economy
and lousy governance. His long-term goal is to transform his nation of 46
million into a modern European state. He wants to decentralise power, amend the
constitution and sign the latest chapter in the EU association deal, which he
personally drafted as foreign minister. The European path will help Ukraine
modernise, he argues, and – as his campaign slogan puts it – "to live in a
new way".
It is unclear what Putin's view of
Poroshenko is, although it is clear that Poroshenko has already paid a price
for his outspoken pro-western views. Last summer Moscow banned chocolates from
his Roshen factory in Lipetsk, southern Russian, supposedly on health grounds.
In March riot police shut down the plant and seized its warehouse. Poroshenko
also lost his shipyard in the Crimean port of Sevastopol when Russian troops
overran the Black Sea peninsula. He has vowed to use all levers to get Crimea
back. Poroshenko has said he would negotiate with political
forces from the east of the country, but not with armed separatists responsible
for attacks on official buildings and soldiers.
There is also concern for Poroshenko’s physical
safety, especially remembering Yushchenko’s poisoning with dioxine when he was
on the campaign trail in 2004.
In
other news, in Crimea, it has been reported numerous times that shelves have
gone empty in the Crimean supermarkets: “As usual, nobody knows anything here. It is also
unknown what is to come. They say that trucks are not being let through since
Saturday. Starting June the hryvnia will not be in circulation here – we were
informed of this in a “timely” manner on May 12th. The shopkeepers say that the
bulk retailers are either going to refuse supplying goods to the Crimea, or the
licenses and opening of new rouble accounts will take time. Everything left in
the stocks is being sold with crazy prices,” Simferopol
citizen Irina Bondarenko
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