A vote for Europe. And a Jewish candidate who outpolled the anti-Semites.
KIEV, Ukraine — Billionaire chocolate magnate Petro Poroshenko claimed victory in early presidential elections Sunday after two election polls showed him winning 56 percent of the vote, well above the threshold to avoid a second round. Poroshenko immediately vowed to hold new parliamentary elections, defuse a separatist uprising in the east, move the country towards Europe, and restore relations with Russia. His election is an important step toward pulling the country back from the abyss, but it's only part of a long process as Ukraine seeks to end the political crisis that deepened when previous president Viktor Yanukovych fled to Russia in February after more than 100 died in violent protests against him.
Ukrainians' vote was foremost a call to move the country forward.
The high turnout and landslide result was less a show of overwhelming love for Poroshenko than a desire to avoid a potentially divisive second round. Many of those who voted for Poroshenko said they saw him as the best of a bad bunch and wanted to hasten the foregon conclusion of his election. With the next round not scheduled until June 15, a clash would have undermined the eventual winner and given the conflict in the east three weeks to deteriorate further. Ukrainians have bigger problems to worry about — a moribund economy, the prospect of civil war, and the threat of Russian invasion, to name but a few — and want a new leader to start tackling them as soon as possible.
Dan Kitwood / Getty Images
Poroshenko's win was a vote for Ukraine to move closer to Europe.
After the trauma of the bloody revolution against Yanukovych — which began with protests over his spurning a deal with the EU in favor of Russia — no candidate could have gotten anywhere without pledging to move the country towards Europe. Poroshenko, however, is by all accounts a passionate believer in a European Ukraine. He speaks excellent English, is on close terms with the eurocrats of Brussels, and backed the protests from the moment they began. This all came at great expense to his own business of selling sweets to Russia, which was damaged by legal reprisals for his political stand.
Dan Kitwood / Getty Images
But he still needs to convince Ukrainians he doesn't represent the bad old days of back-room politics.
Though Poroshenko's rise in popularity came on the back of his part in the protests, he represents many things Ukrainians united against. He's a billionaire oligarch who has so far refused to say he'll sell his influential TV news channel. He's served in government under every president since independence, including the ousted Yanukovych. He's cut deals across the country's murky political spectrum, most notably one brokered by notorious pro-Russia oligarch Dmitry Firtash under which fellow contender and protest leader Vitaly Klitschko dropped out in favor of him. His supporters argue that pragmatist streak is what the country needs to deal with Russia and fix its moribund economy. But whether ordinary Ukrainians can stomach it is another story.
