Billionaire wins Ukraine presidential vote
Print Edition
CHOCOLATE magnate Petro Poroshenko won Ukraine’s presidential election yesterday with an absolute majority, exit polls showed, averting the need for a runoff vote next month.
Two polls gave Poroshenko, a billionaire businessman with long experience in government, 55.9 to 57.3 percent, well ahead of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in second place with just over 12 percent.
If confirmed by results today, there will be no need for a runoff vote on June 15.
Ukrainians, weary of six months of political turmoil, hope their new president will be able to pull their country of 45 million people back from the brink of bankruptcy, dismemberment and civil war.
But, highlighting the scale of the challenge facing Poroshenko, armed pro-Russian militants barred people from voting in much of Ukraine’s Donbass industrial heartland yesterday, turning the main city of Donetsk into a ghost town.
Poroshenko, 48, has promised closer economic and political ties with the West in defiance of Russian President Vladimir Putin, but he will also have to try to mend shattered relations with Ukraine’s giant northern neighbour, which provides most of its natural gas and is the major market for its exports.
The pro-Moscow separatists have proclaimed independent “people’s republics” in the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk and blocked voting there as that would imply they were still part of Ukraine. Nor was any vote held in Crimea, which Russia annexed in March after the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovich.
Ukrainian officials hailed a high voter turnout in much of the sprawling country but said only about 20 percent of polling stations in the two restive eastern regions had functioned.
Putin said on Saturday he would respect the voters’ will. He has announced the pullback of tens of thousands of Russian troops massed on the border.
But the absence of more than 15 percent of the potential electorate from the election could give Moscow an excuse to raise doubts about the victor’s legitimacy and continue applying pressure on the new president in Kiev.
Poroshenko is hardly a new face in Ukrainian politics, having served in a cabinet under Yanukovich and also under a previous government led by Yanukovich’s foes. This breadth of experience has given him a reputation as a pragmatist capable of bridging Ukraine’s divide between supporters and foes of Moscow.
He nevertheless was a strong backer of the street protests that toppled Yanukovich and is thus acceptable to many in the “Maidan” movement of pro-European protesters who have kept their tented camp in the capital to keep pressure on the new leaders.
Since Yanukovich fled in February after more than 100 people were killed, Moscow has refused to recognise the interim leaders in Kiev, describing them as a fascist junta who threaten the safety of millions of Russian speakers.
Ukrainians hope the vote can help because Moscow could not so quickly dismiss an elected leader with a solid mandate.
The United States and European Union also view the election as a decisive step towards ending their worst confrontation with Moscow since the Cold War.
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