A comedian with no political experience won a landslide victory in Ukraine’s presidential election Sunday.

Volodymyr Zelensky, whose only previous political role was playing the president on television, trounced incumbent Petro Poroshenko by taking 73 per cent of the vote, according to exit polls conducted by several think tanks.

Poroshenko lost to the television star across all regions of the country, including in the west where he traditionally enjoyed strong support.



At his campaign headquarters, as the exit polls were published, he said: ‘I will never let you down.’

‘While I am not formally president yet, as a citizen of Ukraine I can tell all post-Soviet countries: ‘Look at us! Everything is possible!’

Meanwhile incumbent Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko conceded he had been soundly defeated in a run-off vote by the comedian and would be leaving office next month, but said he did not plan to quit politics altogether.

It was an extraordinary outcome to a campaign that started as a joke but struck a chord with voters frustrated by poverty, corruption and a five-year war that has claimed some 13,000 lives.

The 41-year-old star of TV series ‘Servant of the People’ will now take the helm of a country of 45 million people beset by challenges and having run on the vaguest of political platforms.

After taking the most votes in last month’s first-round election, Zelensky had enjoyed a strong lead over the 53-year-old Poroshenko going into Sunday’s poll.

All opinion polls up to the vote suggested incumbent President was heading for defeat amid widespread anger over poverty, corruption and war.

Both men – who traded insults and accusations in a rowdy debate at the Kiev national football stadium on Friday – had pledged to keep Ukraine on a pro-Western course.

Victory for Zelenskiy in Sunday’s second-round runoff would be a dramatic departure in a country where previous presidential elections since independence were won by experienced politicians including three former prime ministers.

Zelensky’s bid to lead the country of 45 million people was initially dismissed as a joke when he announced his candidacy on New Year’s Eve.

His unorthodox campaign relied heavily on quirky social media posts and comedy gigs instead of traditional rallies and leafleting. He run his campaign mainly on Instagram, where he has 3.7 million followers.

He has also promised to fight corruption, a message that has resonated with Ukrainians who are fed up with politics as usual in a country of 42 million people that remains one of Europe’s poorest nearly three decades after winning independence from the Soviet Union.

An opinion poll by the KIIS research firm on Tuesday showed Zelenskiy with 72 per cent of the vote and Poroshenko with 25 per cent. Last week a different survey put them on 61 per cent and 24 per cent respectively.
http://tellmystory.com.ng/story/from-comedy-house-to-presidential-palaceukrainian-comedian-zelensky-wins-election-by-a-landslide