The EconomistJuly 27th 2019 271I
n the hit Ukranian television show
“Servant of the People”, the schoolteach-
er-turned-president, Vasyl Holoborodko,
responds to resistance against his reform
efforts by shooting up parliament. After be-
ing sworn in as the real-life president of
Ukraine in May, Volodymyr Zelensky, the
comedian behind Holoborodko’s charac-
ter, carried out a verbal massacre in the
Rada, declaring his intention to dissolve it.
“Our citizens are tired of the experienced,
pompous, systemic politicians,” he roared.
Voters rewarded his assault. In snap
elections on July 21st, Mr Zelensky’s perso-
nal new party, Servant of the People (sp),
won the first single-party majority in mod-
ern Ukrainian history. sptook 43% of the
party-list vote; its candidates also won 130
of 199 first-past-the-post single-mandate
districts, giving the party 254 of the 424
mps overall. Opposition Platform—For
Life, a pro-Russian force strong in the east,
took second with 13%. Parties led by a for-
mer president, Petro Poroshenko, and a
former prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko,
picked up just 8% each. Golos, a new re-form-oriented party founded by a rock-
star, Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, squeezed in
with 6%. Some 80% of mps are new.
Like Mr Zelensky’s victory with 73% of
the vote in the presidential contest in April,
the sweep of the Rada reflects Ukrainians’
disgust with their ruling elite. The oli-
garchs who have exercised outsize influ-
ence on Ukraine’s politics for decades feel
unsettled. “Their glory days are over,” says
Balazs Jarabik of the Carnegie Endowment,
a think-tank. This became especially ap-
parent in the single-mandate districts,
where money used to provide an easy path
to victory. In one emblematic case, the mil-
lionaire owner of a large factory in the Za-
porizhia region, who had previously been
elected to parliament four times, lost to a
29-year-old wedding photographer.
Together, the two elections this year
amount to a new Ukrainian revolution,
this one at the ballot box. Mr Zelensky
promised oodles: to end the war with Rus-
sia in the east, revive the economy and
uproot Ukraine’s rampant corruption. Over
40% of the population believes the countryis heading in the right direction, up from
just 15% at the start of the year. With the
Rada now on board, he will have to begin
honouring those promises. Mr Zelensky’s
first big post-election task will be the selec-
tion of a prime minister.
There are reasons to be bullish. The for-
mer actor “wants to go down in history as
the one who changed everything complete-
ly,” says one senior official. Mr Zelensky
does not himself appear motivated by
money, unlike many of his predecessors.
He says he wants a technocrat as prime
minister; he has floated a respected re-
former, Ruslan Ryaboshapka, as a possible
prosecutor-general, a key figure in the fight
against corruption. “We’re cautious opti-
mists,” says Vitaliy Shabunin, a prominent
anti-corruption activist.
Cautious is the operative word. Mr Ze-
lensky’s tenure has been as contradictory
as it is unconventional. Calls to bar Porosh-
enko-era officials from serving in govern-
ment have set off alarm bells among Uk-
raine’s Western backers and civil-society
activists, who fear that could exclude some
competent reformers. So too have some of
Mr Zelensky’s associated. His chief of staff,
Andrei Bogdan, is a lawyer who most re-
cently represented Ihor Kolomoisky, a con-
troversial oligarch, in his efforts to retake
control of PrivatBank, which was national-
ised in the wake of fraud allegations.
The battle for PrivatBank will be a lit-
mus test. Mr Kolomoisky, whose tvchan-
nel airs Mr Zelensky’s shows, raised a glassUkraine’s parliamentary electionsTotal victory
KIEV
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