Volodymyr Zelensky clears the old elite out of parliament

But will Ukraine’s comedian president be able to complete his revolution?

IN THE HIT Ukranian television show “Servant of the People”, the schoolteacher-turnedpresident, Vasyl Holoborodko, responds to resistance against his reform efforts by shooting up parliament. After being sworn in as the real-life president of Ukraine in May, Volodymyr Zelensky, the comedian behind Holoborodko’s character, 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 personal new party, Servant of the People (SP), won the first singleparty majority in modern Ukrainian history. SP took 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 former president, Petro Poroshenko, and a former prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, picked up just 8% each. Golos, a new reform-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 oligarchs who have exercised outsize influence 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 apparent in the single-mandate districts, where money used to provide an easy path to victory. In one emblematic case, the millionaire owner of a large factory in the Zaporizhia 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 Russia in the east, revive the economy and uproot Ukraine’s rampant corruption. Over 40% of the population believes the country is 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 selection of a prime minister.

There are reasons to be bullish. The former actor “wants to go down in history as the one who changed everything completely,” 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 reformer, Ruslan Ryaboshapka, as a possible prosecutor-general, a key figure in the fight against corruption. “We’re cautious optimists,” says Vitaliy Shabunin, a prominent anti-corruption activist.

Cautious is the operative word. Mr Zelensky’s tenure has been as contradictory as it is unconventional. Calls to bar Poroshenko-era officials from serving in government have set off alarm bells among Ukraine’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 recently represented Ihor Kolomoisky, a controversial oligarch, in his efforts to retake control of Privatbank, which was nationalised in the wake of fraud allegations.

The battle for Privatbank will be a litmus test. Mr Kolomoisky, whose TV channel airs Mr Zelensky’s shows, raised a glass of vodka to celebrate Mr Zelensky’s win; he returned to Ukraine following almost two years of self-imposed exile shortly thereafter. Ukraine’s courts, widely seen as crooked, may help him take back the bank: one Kiev judge recently ruled the nationalisation illegal. That would jeopardise the country’s IMF loans. Mr Zelensky has said that he will defend the interests of the state. Both men have played down their ties. Yet Mr Kolomoisky now tells The Economist that he has discussed Privatbank by telephone with Mr Zelensky; the president’s team declined to comment.

How much Mr Zelensky can challenge the old system, entrenched in the bureaucracy, the courts and the security services, depends on the team he can assemble. The president has yet to choose a defence minister, a big gap given the war with Russia simmering in the east. Although some appointees boast impressive reform backgrounds, others came over from Mr Zelensky’s production studio, Kvartal 95. Little binds the incoming SP MPS beyond the banner they ran under; Mr Zelensky may struggle to control his party. Oligarchs, including Mr Kolomoisky, are said to have their own factions inside it. As Mikhail Minakov, a political philosopher, cautions, “This elite won’t necessarily be better than the previous one.”