Kiev: At 33, Kira Rudyk already heads a company with a thousand employees and is among a host of ambitious young political novices standing in Ukraine’s parliamentary polls on Sunday.
The chief operational officer at the Ukrainian branch of Ring, a US smart home security start-up acquired by Amazon last year for over $1 billion, Rudyk is standing for pro-Western party Golos, or Voice.
The party was launched in May by Ukrainian rock star Svyatoslav Vakarchuk and opinion polls predict it is likely to get into parliament.
“I am a start-up enthusiast at heart and when Svyatoslav told me there was a chance of getting into parliament and being able to change the things that are going badly, I said to myself: why not?” Rudyk said.
The parliamentary polls called by recently-elected President Volodymyr Zelensky are expected to usher in a new era in the ex-Soviet country dominated up to now by politicians who grew up in the USSR.
“This will be a fundamental turning point,” said sociologist Iryna Bekeshkina of the Kiev-based Democratic Initiatives Foundation, who predicts that between 50 and 70 per cent of the next parliament will be first-time MPs.
Ukrainians elected Zelensky, a comedian with no political experience in April, frustrated at the long-drawn-out war against Moscow-backed separatists in the east that has killed some 13,000 as well as ingrained corruption and economic woes.
Parliamentary polls look likely to follow the same trend: out of the five parties leading in opinion polls, two are newly created — Golos and Zelensky’s own party, Servant of the People. Packed with young people new to politics, the two parties have gone so far as banning any candidates who previously served as MPs from their lists.
Their candidates include businesspeople, athletes and activists. Their average age is 37.
The president’s party, which is named after a sitcom in which he starred, is predicted to get almost half the vote, followed by three more established parties.
The pro-Russian Opposition Platform is tipped to win up to 14 per cent, the party of ex-president Petro Poroshenko up to 9 per cent and that of ex-prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko around 7 per cent. Golos is expected to win between 4 and 9 per cent.
One of the candidates for Zelensky’s party is Iryna Vereshchuk, who previously served as mayor of a small town in western Ukraine and now heads a think-tank in Kiev.
The 39-year-old appears desperate to make the “political big time” and put herself forward when the party issued a call for candidates. —AFP
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