Ukraine votes as comic poised to top presidential election
kiev — 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 per cent support in final surveys.
In polling stations across Ukraine, voters expressed dissatisfaction with the candidates and many told AFP they were opting for what they saw as the least of three evils.
“I’m voting for anyone apart from Poroshenko. I don’t believe him, he cheated us,” said 40-yearold housewife Olga, who had come to a polling station in the Western city of Lviv with her young daughter.—
A new life is beginning, a good life, without corruption, without bribes Volodymyr Zelensky, A comedian