Kravchuk: Upcoming elections could be Ukraine’s last
The upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections could be Ukraine’s last, if the people make a mistake again and “vote for buckwheat”, said Ukraine’s first president Leonid Kravchuk, as reported by Glavcom news outlet.
In the former president’s opinion, Ukrainians still have not determined who they should vote for, since they do not know how to.
“They are unable to choose… It wasn’t by chance that the UK reached the conclusion that you will never be registered as a candidate for parliament if you weren’t a member of local government beforehand. Because you need to know how it is done at the very bottom. But with us, he screamed ‘I will do everything’ and people believed,” Kravchuk comments. He emphasizes that today there are many ways to collect information on the person running for the presidency (the internet, TV, newspapers) and to “detect the liar and the vociferous”.
Kravchuk says that a person who has never worked on the political, economic and social front cannot properly fulfill the presidential duties, because he will not know anything. You also cannot compare a country to a business, because “the system of state management should not be based on the principles of business”.
However, the former president does not support the widespread opinion that the Verkhovna Rada should elect more young people and lower the entry barrier. According to him, the barrier should be at the 4% level, to prevent a massive influx of random people:
“Youth is not an advantage, it passes… People have already become so convinced that ‘we don’t need these, we need only young people’ that they don’t even look what kind of young person it is… You need to look according to the situation. If it is a parliamentary government, there need to be several parties with experienced members, who know that they have two tasks: to write laws and to control their implementation”.
Kravchuk’s opinion on the possible return to major politics of Viktor Medvedchuk, the former head of his administration, is clear: it is virtually impossible. The most he could achieve would be to become an MP, because he longs to single-handedly “keep everything under control”.
Kravchuk says that he does not intend to join anyone’s team, but before the elections he will try to attend the events of all the political forces – the left, right, Timoshenko, the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, and the People’s Front.
“This is not because I’m particularly interested, but because I want to compare, in order to say to people ‘Beware’. I signed all the institutional documents on the creation of the Ukrainian government, without exception. And when, today, I appear somewhere publicly and people come up to me and ask: ‘Why did you do that? We are not ready. Why did you make it so that corrupt people came into power?’ how should I respond? I should say before these elections: don’t do it, it’s a mistake. And in order to say it, I need to study everything,” the former head of state emphasized.
Based on everything that has been analyzed, he asks Ukrainians to be especially careful before elections, both presidential and parliamentary.
“If we make a mistake this time, and choose buckwheat, these could be our last elections,” Kravchuk believe