Comic likely to top first round as Ukraine chooses president

AFP via Yahoo Australia ^ | March 31st, 2019 | by Olga SHYLENKO with Vasyl TRUKHAN

[Mariner]

A comedian whose political experience is limited to playing the president on TV vowed to tackle Ukraine's corruption, as he voted Sunday in the first stage of a presidential election he is tipped to win.

Actor Volodymyr Zelensky's bid began as a long shot but he has leapfrogged establishment politicians amid public anger over graft and stagnating living standards.

"A new life is beginning, a good life, without corruption, without bribes," the 41-year-old told journalists as he voted with his wife at a Kiev polling station.

If elected, the entertainer will take the reins of a country fighting Russia-backed separatists in its east and struggling to recover from an economic crisis.

Incumbent Petro Poroshenko was vying with ex-prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko to face Zelensky in a run-off next month, according to final opinion polls.

A recent survey put them neck and neck at around 17 percent, though another showed Poroshenko -- who amassed a vast fortune in the chocolate business before being elected leader in 2014 -- pulling ahead of ally-turned-foe Tymoshenko to make the second round.

Zelensky, the 41-year-old star of a political comedy series called "Servant of the People" that returned for its third season this week, had more than 25 percent support in final surveys.

[Mariner]

Even Ukrainians know Ukrainian politics are a joke.

And have been since the Maidan coup of 2014.

[Larry Lucido]

So are we talking comedian as defined in the U.S. or in Romania?

Or maybe Ukraine has its own definition. But some don't seem to have a sense of humor.

[Robert A Cook PE]

The international press (Reuters, UP, AP, NYTimes, the Brit papers, and here the AFP) are playing off of their constant theme
"See, Trump is such a stupid and incompetent uncultured hack that that other countries are electing stupid and incompetent hacks who are not "established members of our established political elites!"

[NorseViking]

The psychology behind it is pretty much the same which brought Trump into presidency. A universal distrust and contempt towards political establishment.

[SunkenCiv]

We're still ahead -- we had a clown in charge from 2009 through 2017, although he wasn't a comedian per se, he was laughable.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Subtle! Very true.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks RACPE, it would have been less subtle had I got the punctuation right.

[mac_truck]

Its interesting that Zelensky is being labelled as a ‘comedian’ by the western corporate media, when in fact he’s best known in Ukraine for having played a serious role in a popular television series drama for the past five years.