Zelensky to blame his MPs and take personal credit for victories to win votes, says political analyst
Ukrainian political parties have already started limbering up for the next parliamentary elections, which are now a year-and-a-half away. The Ukrainian opposition lacks unity and the ruling Servant of the People party needs rebranding, senior analyst at the OPORA Citizens Network Oleksandr Klyuzhev has told Radio NV.
“All the opposition parties want to find a reason to say that the electoral trend has changed in a direction unfavorable to the party in power,” said Klyuzhev.
“The local midterm elections in Chernihiv (in March 27 - ed.) may be a formal reason for doing so, if a Servant of the People member doesn’t win there… (But) I don’t see, right now, any basis to assume that there’s a serious consolidation process happening in the (opposition) political powers.”
Klyuzhev also added that Servant of the People would likely take a different approach to their upcoming campaigns, as the next parliamentary and presidential elections will happen almost simultaneously.
“(Servants of the People) will in any case be overshadowed by (Ukraine’s President Volodymyr) Zelensky’s second term run, regardless of whether the parliamentary elections are held before or after the presidential ones,” says Klyuzhev.
According to the Ukrainian constitution, the next presidential elections should take place in March 2024.
“The incumbent president will try to convince his voters that Servant of the People MPs are to blame for all the mistakes, while at the same taking personal credit for every victory. Thus, the party will inevitably undergo some rebranding.”
Zelensky’s representative at the Constitutional Court, Fedir Venislavsky, has said that the next parliamentary elections should be held in 2024 and not in 2023, as planned.
And at a Nov. 26 press conference, Zelensky mentioned that the schedule for the next planned parliamentary and presidential elections may be changed.
According to the data published by Razumkov Center (a Ukrainian non-governmental public policy think tank), if the presidential elections were to happen tomorrow, Zelensky and former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko would get the most votes. The two leading candidates would only be 2% apart among those who intend to vote and have already chosen their candidate.
As for political parties, Poroshenko’s European Solidarity is the clear leader and is breaking further away from Zelensky’s Servant of the People.
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