Almost three years to the day since becoming Prime Minister, Krill Serbin has launched his party’s election platform – promising “a new decade” of “strength and solidarity for all”.
Flanked by his de-facto deputy Yulia Schevchenko and Coalition presidential candidate Dimochka Yakushkin, Serbin called on voters to help him “end the deadlock in politics” by electing the first one-party leadership team in almost 20 years. “Now is the time to get our country moving. That is only possible if we end this deadlock. Reelect my government, and Dimochka Yakushkin as president, and together we will deliver real change” said the Prime Minister – speaking at his launch event this afternoon. Having “promised and delivered stability, security and unity” since coming to power, when he replaced Asta Dahn in the role after a series of controversies, the Prime Minister said he could “be trusted to deliver”.
The speech, in front of a home crowd in the city of Pidhiyna, located in his lower-house seat of Zeya and Yurga, was around 20 minutes long, before Schevchenko and Yakushkin also made brief remarks. The Prime Minister laboured lines about how President Tattar and the Unionist Party had ‘prevented’ him from achieving key policy milestones – but that under a new, more ‘ceremonial’ approach to the presidency, Mr Serbin would be able to “deliver real results for the people”.
It remains unclear however, quite how the Prime Minister would seek to govern under the theoretical president of Mr Yakushkin – an experienced former government minister.
“He wants to remake the constitution, but doesn’t think they can get the votes to do this in both houses of the Executive, requiring a referendum. That’s not going to happen – and with the Unionists managing to bring forward the presidential vote due to the president’s resignation, there is no time either. Serbin instead has signed up former foreign minister Yakushkin to play the part of an elder statesman – but there is nothing in the Coalition’s platform to formally change any aspects of the role. It’s a punt from the Prime Minister to try and keep himself as the focus of the campaign – and neutralise the effect of having the president run for reelection at the same time as the legislative vote” said one long-time supporter of the Prime Minister, who now, according to many, faces an uphill battle to remain in the role.
“Serbin has done the job perfectly well – and avoided any major scandals. There is some frustration about how he has handled some issues, including the fall out from the 2020 terror bombings. We still don’t have the investigation, which many believe has finished but is being prevented from releasing its findings in case they damage the Prime Minister. But the problem is he has left it far too late to set out his vision for the future of the country. He now risks being swept up in a tide being created much more effectively by the Unionists – who look like they are in a much better space going into the first vote next Friday” said another.
Quite how the Prime Minister expects to navigate the final week of the campaign is as yet unclear. President Tattar and Preaisk state representative Janoslav Csoňka, the Unionist candidate for Prime Minister, are continuing to tour the country and are focusing on the ‘bread and butter kitchen table’ issues of housing, wages and new money for coastal defences. They are hoping a focus on policy will show that they “have the answers to major challenges” and can “win a better deal for working people” if Csoňka is able to deliver the first Unionist government in nearly two decades. Light on detail, the Prime Minister’s platform for the Coalition could not stand in greater contrast to his Unionist opponents. The embattled Nationalist Party also faces being outflanked by the president and Csoňka’s rhetoric – with the party using a similar strategy to that deployed in the 2019 presidential election four years ago.
“What is clear is that the Unionists are gaining the most from the Nationalists falling back. Most people don’t see Alexei Sukhorukov qualifying into a run-off vote for the presidency this time. It will most likely be a straight choice between Tattar and Yakushkin – who fixes many of the problems the Coalition faced in the last election with Katrina Fischer. He’s a born and bred Amarian – that’s enough to give him the edge against the Nationalists who are struggling to find a space between Serbin’s party and the president” said election specialist Boža Lalić, who teaches political studies at the Amar State University in Arvi.
All parties now face the final week of campaigning having launched their own election platforms.
