No policies, no problem: Comedian's election success is latest warning for old-school politicians
Comedian and presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaks to reporters at his campaign headquarters in Kiev, Ukraine, last Sunday.Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.When comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced at midnight on New Year's Eve that he was running to be president of Ukraine, many pundits dismissed the move as a public relations stunt.
Most opinion polls suggest he will beat President Petro Poroshenko by a considerable margin in the April 21 runoff.Zelenskiy appears set to follow the trend of candidates and parties around the world who are coming out of nowhere to topple establishment figures. Zuzana Čaputová who was just elected Slovakia's first female president was also an activist-lawyer and a political outsider. And even French President Emmanuel Macron, despite being involved in politics for some years, shocked Europe when he ousted the traditional parties with his En Marche! movement in 2017.
When it comes to Zelenskiy's policies,"his appeal is that of a blank check," Dmitri Trenin, the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank, said.
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