Vakarchuk’s Voice seeks to challenge old rules of game

Before Ukrainians elected comedic actor Volodymyr Zelensky as their president, many favored rock musician Svyatoslav Vakarchuk as leader of the nation.

But the vocalist of popular rock band Okean Elzy decided to not run for president. Instead, he runs for parliament with his new political party, Voice.

Introduced just two months before the scheduled date of the snap parliamentary election on July 21, Voice is steadily climbing in the polls. It appears to have secured the 5 percent threshold to win seats in the future parliament.

With Vakarchuk at the helm, Voice is running with a pool of accomplished and mostly young — average age, 37 — professionals and activists. They are all political newcomers.

“I don’t believe in professional politicians. It’s a myth,” Vakarchuk told journalists on July 1 after a campaign rally in Sloviansk, a city of 110,000 people in Donetsk Oblast.

The rock star said his goal now is to bring new people to the parliament. In the future, he wants the party to grow strong and not depend on his name.

“We have to end this practice of a one-leader party. It is harmful when the public knows only No. 1 on the list,” Vakarchuk said.

Ukraine’s personality-driven parties often lack clear ideological principles, serving only as vehicles for the prominent politician who leads them.

Vakarchuk is not a complete newcomer to politics. He briefly served as a lawmaker in the Ukrainian parliament in 2007–2008, but resigned in disillusionment. But he is willing to give it a second try. He says he prefers a lawmaker’s mandate to the presidency because the parliament is where legal changes happen.

He says this time it will be different for him in parliament.

“It’s one thing to go into parliament as part of a team whose words don’t match their actions, to be a black sheep. It is another thing to have your own political party of like-minded people.”

Vakarchuk says he returned to politics out of a sense of obligation to the nation, even as his rock band Okean Elzy celebrates its 25th anniversary this year and plays to full stadiums across Ukraine.

“The more I meet with people, the more I become convinced I did the right thing,” he said.

Coalition with Zelensky

Voice isn’t the only new party likely to enter parliament. The other such party is President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People, which polls around 40 percent, making it the leader.

One of the biggest questions is whether the two parties will form a coalition, thereby bringing together an unprecedented number of new faces in the Ukrainian legislature.

Vakarchuk is vague about the future coalition, only saying that Voice is ready to negotiate with other parties that support Ukraine’s path to Europe.

Initially, Vakarchuk was unimpressed with the idea of Zelensky as president. During the presidential campaign, the musician called on Ukrainians to vote “not for a gag,” which many viewed as a rejection of Zelensky.

Since then, however, Vakarchuk appears to have softened. Today, he says he wants Zelensky to succeed.

“The president was elected by the people,” the singer said. “Being against the president means being against the people.”