午夜剧场

As of the writing of this article, Ukraine is in the midst of a presidential election campaign. While it was initially thought to be a two-way race between incumbent President Poroshenko and former Prime Minister Tymoshenko, Zelenskyy, a television personality famous as a comedian, suddenly emerged as a leading candidate. A person with no political experience and unknown political insight (to confess, I did not know much about who he was until this presidential election) has suddenly become a leading candidate for president and seems likely to even win the election.

Looking at such a phenomenon, one cannot help but wonder what is happening in Ukrainian politics. Would such a phenomenon occur in other countries? In Russia, there is the opposition political activist Navalny, but he is a lawyer with political contributions such as exposing corruption in the political world, which makes him different from Zelenskyy. Even Trump in the United States had a certain level of political activity, such as running from a fringe party in the 2000 presidential election prior to the 2016 presidential election.

If so, is it the lack of political experience that is conversely supporting Zelenskyy's popularity? In other words, against the backdrop of Ukrainian citizens' distrust of politics, are the people supporting Zelenskyy precisely because he has no political experience at all? There are aspects that make this plausible. The first thing exposed during the Maidan revolution was the accumulation of wealth by then-President Yanukovych, and corruption has not improved since then, leaving Ukrainian citizens with deep-seated distrust of politics. The explanation that they are supporting an inexperienced candidate because they cannot trust existing politicians at all seems persuasive at first glance.

However, I feel there is a missing element in this argument. The owner of the television station where Zelenskyy gained popularity is Kolomoyskyi, one of Ukraine's billionaires who was dismissed as governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast after clashing with Poroshenko. In fact, Kolomoyskyi's shadow seems to be flickering behind Zelenskyy. Although Zelenskyy himself denied it, if Kolomoyskyi is indeed Zelenskyy's patron and is promoting him as someone easy to control, then the structure in which a few wealthy individuals dominate behind the scenes of the political world (and therefore corruption never disappears) remains unchanged. This will likely be one key point for observing Ukrainian politics in the future.