2010-01-20 | Tadeusz A. Olszański

With an advantage of 10 percentage points over PM Yulia Tymoshenko, Viktor Yanukovych, the leader of the opposition Party of Regions, is the frontrunner for the second round of voting in Ukraine’s presidential election. He also seems to be the preferred choice for the supporters of Serhiy Tihipko, the third-placed candidate, who made a successful return to politics after a five-year absence.
 

The election results
 
The first round of the presidential election in Ukraine on 17 January was fully democratic according to international and Ukrainian observers; the numerous irregularities reported did not constitute deliberate ballot rigging, and did not significantly influence the election result.
According to unofficial results, Yanukovych won the first round with a showing of 35.32%, followed by Yulia Tymoshenko (25.05%), Serhiy Tihipko (13.06%) and Arseniy Yatsenyuk (6.96%). The outgoing president Viktor Yushchenko came in fifth, but his result (5.45%) was better than the catastrophic result which pre-election polls had predicted for him. The relatively good showing of Tymoshenko, who had been backed by 16 to 20% of voters in December’s polls, and the unexpected success of Serhiy Tihipko, who according to the same polls had had the support of 6 to 9% of voters, were also noteworthy.
Viktor Yanukovych won in ten districts in eastern and southern Ukraine and in Transcarpathia, gaining an absolute majority in eight of them. He obtained his best result (76%) in his home district of Donetsk. Yulia Tymoshenko won in the sixteen districts of central and western Ukraine, but gained an absolute majority only in one (Volyn). In up to seven districts (five in eastern Ukraine, in Odessa and Sevastopol) she came in third, defeated by both Yanukovych and Tihipko.
The turnout was 66.76%, a higher figure than in the 2007 parliamentary elections (58%), close to the 2006 parliamentary elections (67%), and clearly lower than the first round of the 2004 presidential election (75%). The highest turnout was reported in the Volyn and Lviv districts (74.09 and 73.69% respectively), and the lowest in the Transcarpathia and Chernivtsi districts (56.74 and 59.61% respectively).
The results indicate that the deep, historically rooted political divisions between eastern and southern Ukraine on the one hand, and the central and western parts of the country on the other, still prevail. Yanukovych supporters clearly dominate in the former, while in the latter the plurality, but not the majority, of voters support Tymoshenko. Despite several years of efforts, the PM has not been able to boost her popularity in the eastern and southern parts of the country.
 

The Tihipko phenomenon
 
The high showing of Serhiy Tihipko, who has been absent from politics for the last five years and started his campaign very late (in autumn) is the greatest surprise of this election. Tihipko owes his success to his calm and consistent campaign, which involved a minimum of populism, no personal attacks and no dirty tricks. Tihipko managed to take advantage of the Ukrainian public's need for a 'new face', a politician who has not been involved in the struggles of the last five years.
Tihipko gained support almost throughout the entire Ukraine, taking votes away from both the frontrunners. Thanks to this success, he has moved to the top league of Ukrainian politics. Both Yanukovych (indirectly), and Tymoshenko (directly) have already offered him the prime ministership in return for his support in the runoff. Tihipko himself has declared that he will not support any of the candidates. Apparently he is counting on the success of his party, Strong Ukraine, in this year's parliamentary elections (which are much more likely to be held soon if Yanukovych wins the presidency), so that he could seek the prime ministership as the leader of one of the main factions in the Ukrainian parliament.
 
Forecast before the runoff
It appears that the campaign before the second round of voting will be intense. Yanukovych will benefit (also psychologically) from his first place in the first round and from the discipline of his original voters. He will be fighting mainly for Tihipko’s electorate, whose views are relatively close to his own. His position may be threatened by a possible fall in turnout in eastern and southern Ukraine, due to voter fatigue or objective factors such as the difficult winter weather conditions or a possible new outbreak of the influenza epidemic. Therefore, Yanukovych is expected to pursue a campaign designed to mobilise the voters while retaining a non-confrontational approach.
Tymoshenko's assets include, first and foremost, her great determination and ability to mobilise the electorate, as well as the long duration of the last phase of the campaign (three weeks between the first round and the runoff). She will also have an advantage over Yanukovych in public debates, if any are held. The main challenge for Tymoshenko is that she needs to win over those voters who backed Yushchenko and Yatsenyuk (nearly 13% in total), and at least a portion of Tihipko's electorate. This will be difficult because these electorate segments respond to different programmes. Therefore, it is possible that her staff will decide to pursue a 'campaign of fear', intended to persuade voters that Yanukovych in power would pose a threat not only to democracy, but to the very independence of Ukraine.
 

Expected reactions to the election result
 
Despite the positive assessment of the first round of voting expressed by observers, Tymoshenko’s staff has claimed that ballot rigging in the polling stations resulted in a shift of 3 percentage points of votes from Tymoshenko to Yanukovych. The former has not brought the case to court, however, which suggests that the claims are merely a propaganda exercise. Nevertheless, if Yanukovych wins the runoff, allegations of vote-rigging that the election was rigged (by tampering with the votes cast at home, adding extra voters to lists on election day, or fraud during the ballot counting) should be expected. The smaller the margin of Yanukovych's victory is, the more intense those allegations will be: if he wins by a narrow margin (of up to 4 percentage points), the Tymoshenko camp will probably try to challenge the election result in court, albeit with little chance of success. Demonstrations, if any, will only be used in an auxiliary role to support the legal challenge – presently the potential for protest in Ukraine is nothing like what it was in 2004.
If Tymoshenko wins, the Yanukovych camp may also try to challenge the result in court, albeit with less determination and with only minimal chances of success. It is also commonly expected that in the event Tymoshenko wins the election, Yanukovych will cease to be the leader of the Party of Regions, and the party itself will experience serious internal problems, or may even break up into several groups.
 
 
 
 
Appendix 1
 
Sergiy Tihipko was born in 1960 in the Moldavian SSR, and has been living in Dnipropetrovsk at least since his university years. A metallurgy engineer and economist (PhD in 1996) by education, he worked in the steel industry, and later in the Komsomol (between 1989 and 1991, as the first secretary of the Dnipropetrovsk district committee). He has worked in the banking sector (Pryvat bank) since autumn 1991, and he quickly rose to become one of Ukraine's major entrepreneurs. He has held numerous public offices, including deputy prime ministership (1997–1999), ministry of economy (1999–2000) and chairmanship of the National Bank of Ukraine (2002–2004). He was the leader of the Trudova Ukraina party which he himself established (2000–2005), and was a member of parliament from 2000 to 2003. In 2004, he served as the head of Viktor Yanukovych's election staff, but resigned after the runoff and withdrew from political life, returning to his business activities. In summer 2009, he unexpectedly returned to politics and re-created his party (this time renamed Strong Ukraine).
Tihipko is considered to have pragmatically liberal and moderately pro-Russian views, and his current programme includes elements of economic nationalism. During this year's campaign, he called for the introduction of a presidential system combined with the simultaneous development of local government, a plan for economic recovery based primarily on the development of domestic production and export potential, as well as deregulation, a determined fight against corruption, the creation of a strong army, equality in relations with the EU (without pursuing membership aspirations), and closer economic co-operation with India and China. He also called for good relations with Russia to be re-established by giving up 'anti-Russian rhetoric', and for the improvement of formal status of the Russian language (but short of granting it the status of the official language). He has so far remained silent about possible relations with NATO.
 
 
Appendix 2

Support for leading candidates in the first round of presidential elections in Ukraine on 17 January 2010
(unofficial results based on 100% counted ballots from regional polling stations)
 

 
 
Appendix 3
 
 

 

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