Poroshenko Has 'No Chances to Stay in Power for More Than 1.5 Year'

Ukrainian political analysts predict that President Poroshenko is doomed to stay at power for only half a year more if he does not stop his ‘information manipulations’ and launches not an ‘imitation’ but, instead, real modernization in the country.

The military conflict in the east of the country, decentralization and economic reforms – those are the issues to define President Poroshenko’s political future, Ukrainian political analysts told the country’s news website 112ua.

Some of the analysts, however, were very skeptical of the first year of his presidency.

“I am one of the closest allies to the president and want him to stay in power for at least two terms,” the website quotes Dmytro Korchyncky, the leader of the Ukrainian Bratstvo (Brotherhood) party, as saying.

“The recent tendency however is that [Leonid] Kuchma (the second president of Ukraine, 1994-2005) was in power for two terms, [Victor] Yushchenko (the third president of Ukraine, 2005-2010) – one term, [Victor] Yanukovych (the fourth president of Ukraine, 2010 – February 2014) – half a term, and Poroshenko, very likely, is to stay a quarter of the term,” he added. “There such a mood in the society.”

“Somewhat in half a year I will be his only ally. He deceived us, the society, in everything he promised, he lived up to none of the hopes.”

Another political analyst, Andrey Zolotarev, is convinced that it is high time for the president to make conclusions from his first term and start “doing real business”.

“If the president makes conclusions out of his first term and starts doing a real business instead of information manipulations, in other words, stops lying and launches not an imitation but a real modernization of the country, then he will have some prospective ahead,” he said.

A poll carried out by the Kiev-based Research & Branding Group from March 6-16, shows just how fed-up Ukrainians are with the way their country is being run.

Poroshenko may have been in power for just over nine months by that time, but just a third of those asked believed he is doing a good job, while almost 60 percent said they aren’t happy with the way the billionaire is running the country.

Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk is even less popular with less than a quarter of those surveyed believing he is doing a good job in helping to run the country.

Another survey, which marked one year of Poroshenko's presidency and was conducted in the country on May 19-29 by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), showed that if a presidential election was held in Ukraine today, current President Petro Poroshenko would have received 13.6 percent of the vote instead of 54.7 percent he secured last May in what is a dramatic fall in popularity.