He has chocolate factories galore, is a self-made billionaire and occasional revolutionary, but Ukraine’s Petro Poroshenko also wants to be president, and many believe he holds the golden ticket.
The tall, slightly greying 48-year-old is one of Ukraine’s 10 richest men and also one of the most popular, topping opinion polls this week with 25 percent ready to back him in the May 25 snap presidential election.
A shrewd politician who has flip-flopped between governments for more than a decade, Poroshenko was the only Ukrainian oligarch to openly back the pro-European protest movement that ousted president Viktor Yanukovych, under whom he served as economics minister.
Handing out chocolates, or taking to the stage to denounce Ukraine’s stupefying levels of corruption, Poroshenko became a favourite figure at Kiev’s protest camp on Independence Square.
The “time when politicians lied to people is over,” the tycoon said when announcing his candidacy late Friday, the Interfax news agency reported.
His ticket is further boosted with the support of boxer-turned-opposition icon Vitali Klitschko who came second in the poll with nine percent and on Saturday renounced running for president himself to back the diabetic chocolate baron.
Poroshenko was the only politician to fly to Crimea in a bid to negotiate with pro-Russian troops who seized parliament after Yanukovych fell, but was angrily chased off by demonstrators.
“I am sure that a responsible Ukrainian government will be able to get Crimea back. Crimea will forever be Ukrainian,” Poroshenko said of the peninsula which voted to be absorbed by Russia in a referendum which has been declared illegal by most of the international community.
- ‘Moderate and non-contentious’ -
With his government experience from time spent in several cabinet portfolios and links to business, many see him as a capable pair of hands to stem an economy in freefall and unite a country fractured between Moscow and Kiev.
Volodymyr Fesenko of Kiev’s Penta Porochenko political research institute, said while a lot could change in two months, Poroshenko may be more palatable to the electorate than controversy-dogged Yulia Tymoshenko and other less experienced politicians.
“A large part of the population wants an experienced crisis manager at the head of state and Poroshenko has government experience and is considered a successful businessman,” he said.
“Compared to Tymoshenko, Poroshenko is seen as a moderate and non-contentious character… even by the Russian speaking residents of eastern Ukraine.”
Unlike most of Ukraine’s influence-wielding oligarchs who made a killing swallowing up state assets in the chaotic years that followed the Soviet Union’s fall, Poroshenko’s wealth is self-made.
He started out selling cocoa beans, buying up several confectionary plants which he later united into Eastern European candy giant Roshen, which produces 450,000 tons of sweets a year, according to its website.
He also owns companies that make cars and buses, a shipyard and opposition television network Channel 5 which broadcast live from Independence Square at the height of the winter revolution which left some 100 people dead.
Poroshenko’s fortune, estimated at $1.3 billion by Forbes magazine, has taken a hit from Ukraine’s crisis and bitter standoff with Russia — a key market — which annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea following the fall of Yanukovych’s pro-Moscow regime.
Last year, as Ukraine neared the signing of an EU pact fervently supported by Poroshenko, Russia banned chocolate imports from his Roshen factory.
And this month, after Yanukovych’s ousting in an uprising sparked by his decision to reject that EU deal, Moscow shut down a key Roshen confectionary plant in Lipetsk in southern Russia.
- Switching sides -
The married father-of-four was born in the small southwestern town of Bolgrad and studied economics at Kiev State University.
He entered the turbulent world of Ukrainian politics in 1998 as a lawmaker for a grouping loyal to then-president Leonid Kuchma. In 2000, the oligarch was one of the founders of Yanukovych’s Regions Party.
But in 2002, he changed sides and joined forces with his close friend Viktor Yushchenko, who later became a hero of the 2004 pro-democracy Orange Revolution and president of Ukraine.
Poroshenko played a big role in that revolution which erupted when Yanukovych won the presidency in polls widely viewed as rigged.
Under Yushchenko, Poroshenko was foreign minister and president of the central bank.
He had a famous falling out with another presidential contender and star revolutionary, Yulia Tymoshenko, which resulted in both of them being fired by Yushchenko.
And in another switch, he was appointed as economics minister by Yanukovych in 2012. Later that year he was elected to parliament as an independent candidate and had hinted at running for mayor of Kiev before the current crisis.
Poroshenko: Ukraine's chocolate king holds golden ticket
No comments:
Post a Comment