Ukraine’s Electoral Battle Cry 2019

Ukrainian voters faced a nerve-rattling wake-up call two weeks ago when Volodymyr Zelensky, a vaudevillian entertainer and political nobody, solidly outpaced President Petro Poroshenko for the lead in the 2019 presidential elections.

Since then, numerous post-mortems sliced and diced the results but didn’t conclusively answer the elusive question “why?”

Zelensky, 41, who doesn’t speak Ukrainian, built his popularity on a TV stage by ridiculing Ukraine frequently as a porn star while playing its president. He hasn’t offered any serious ideas about how to make life better for Ukrainians nor does he possess any redeeming qualities to be president and the commander in chief of a major European country. As a matter of fact, he is a repeated draft dodger. He and his team are busy trying to figure out what the president of a modern country really does. However, Zelensky does enjoy the patronage of the filthy rich Kharkiv-based oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, whose TV network broadcasts Zelensky’s spoofs.

Zelensky’s flippant attitude about the elections and presidency is best reflected by his absence from yesterday’s campaign debates. After goading Poroshenko into accepting the challenge, Zelensky turned out to be a no-show, leaving the President alone on stage talking to journalists, calling his opponent a virtual candidate and addressing cheering voters in the 70,000-seat Kyiv stadium. Poroshenko stood in front of an empty podium with the comedian’s name written on it and spent nearly an hour talking about his platform and answering questions from the media. Poroshenko seized on Zelensky’s absence to urge Ukrainians not to trust Ukraine’s future to an untested comic at a time of war.

Indeed, Poroshenko’s warnings about Zelensky ring loudly. How can a draft dodger and political neophyte lead Ukraine at a time of a bloody war with its greatest enemy Russia that has claimed thousands of lives? How can the nation trust the country’s defense, arsenal and soldiers to an untested, unknown entity?

Poroshenko is not a perfect president and he has his flaws. But 28 years after Ukraine proclaimed its independence from the Russian empire, there is ample, undeniable evidence that the country is moving in the direction as an independent, prosperous, democratic and inclusive society. He is respected in the United States, Canada and throughout Europe and the free world.

So why was Poroshenko denied his just victory? Some voters said they favored Zelensky’s youthfulness compared with Poroshenko. Others were fulfilling the bidding of oligarchs and the Kremlin. As Putin had said, he could tolerate any president of Ukraine except Poroshenko, the commander in chief who has stymied the Russian war machine. Still others were imbued with vengeance because his or her life hadn’t improved.

Voter fabrication can’t be blamed for the outcome because election observers attested that the voting was without manipulation. However, Russia didn’t allow the process to proceed without interference. Its cyber and psy-ops specialists attempted to sabotage the elections in Ukraine as they are doing around the world. The techniques were both sophisticated and down to earth, complete with lies. Two websites reported that Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė, a staunch supporter and defender of Ukraine in its war with Russia, allegedly remarked that corruption, not Russia, is Ukraine’s greatest enemy. I inquired with Ukrainian diplomats and learned that the comment is not true and the websites are known for posting fabrications.

Corruption is still plaguing Ukraine at all levels of life and little has been done to root it out. However, the complaints about this are dishonest and duplicitous. Corruption doesn’t merely exist at the highest echelons of government, the parliament and corporations. It exists everywhere in Ukraine. Many good, god-fearing Ukrainians still harbor larcenous manners from their soviet past. They should first abandon corruption on personal levels and commit to electing later this year a Verkhovna Rada that is pro-Ukraine and dedicated to eliminating graft and corruption.

Hopefully Ukrainian voters will be able to recognize that they have been targeted and can be brainwashed. Consequently, they can vote against their own best interests, as well as the interests of people who need them most like their neighbors near and far.

Meanwhile, next Sunday, Ukrainians will be making a fateful decision between two singularly vital concepts – not two candidates – similar to their choice in the referendum of December 1, 1991. Twenty-eight years ago more than 90% of Ukrainians voted for independence. Have their lives taken such a significant turn for the worse that Ukrainians would reject independence today? Have they forgotten the strides they made to break the bonds of Russian subjugation and chart their own independent lives? Have they forgotten that Ukrainian servicemen and women as well as civilians are dying in battle with Russian invaders in the eastern oblasts?

Today, the choice is the same as it was in 1991. It’s not Poroshenko or Zelensky.

To paraphrase James Carville’s successful battle cry for Bill Clinton:

It’s independence, stupid!

In voting booths in Ukraine, New York City, across the free world, Ukrainian voters should put aside deep-rooted feelings of retribution, jealousy, spitefulness and punishment and focus on one thought and one thought only. Who has demonstrated that he can maintain Ukraine on its nationally beneficial course to becoming a prosperous, democratic, free European country?

The answer is Petro Poroshenko.