Zelenskiy loses support: policy changes are looming

UKRAINE - In Brief 01 Dec 2019 by Dmytro Boyarchuk

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Everyone is discussing the slump of Zelenskiy's popularity. On November 27th, KIIS released fresh polls on political support. President Zelenskiy lost 21ppt just in the three months since September.His rating is still incredibly high – 52% – however, rumors say the president was extremely disappointed to see that dramatic downward tendency. Allegedly the narrow circle at the President's Office is discussing the revision of key policies. Changes of some members of the Cabinet are on the table.In the election campaign Zelenskiy had been delivering controversial and sometimes mutually exclusive messages to different audiences. That was among the key reasons why the intellectual elite of Ukraine radically rejected Zelenskiy. Now he is harvesting the fruits of his "fallacies". That would have happened one way or another, but we hoped he would have managed to complete at least part of the critical reforms before he started defending his popularity.But everything these days in Ukraine is developing extremely fast.Sociologists have commented that land reform, Donbas policy and disappointment on still-high heating tariffs (Zelenskiy promised to cut tariffs) are the reasons why people have become disappointed. In the series "Servant of the People", everything developed much easier. But reality appeared to be absolutely different. A flow of scandals from MPs elected under the Servant of the People brand only adds to the sour mood. Unfortunately, potential policy changes are bad news for us. Zelenskiy promised to approve land reform in full by December 1st but it’s already clear the "mad printer" has slowed down after opponents of the land market summoned numerous protests. Premie...