No, no, no. UDAR are not about to join the United Opposition. They are very much enjoying the 3rd choice position and have now overtaken the United Opposition in the opinion polls just as I suggested they would.
Simply they have much more to lose rather than to gain by joining the United Opposition, as should be clear from what I have written here, here and here just in the past few weeks.
No, the United Opposition are having a second attempt at convincing UDAR to come to an arrangement where they will not contest head to head constituency seats. The first attempt months ago failed - thankfully.
Why thankfully?
Well why has Arseny Yatseniuk and Front for Change’s popularity plummeted?
The answer is that they joined the United Opposition and deprived the Ukrainian voter of a serious 3rd choice that was without Tymoshenko or Yanukovych. There are an awful lot of non-Party of Regions voters who do not appreciate the United Opposition sham marriage and want a party to vote for that is not involved with Tymoshenko.
Previously that was going to be Yatseniuk and Front for Change - before it got into bed with Tymoshenko and formed the United Opposition. Now that 3rd choice is Klitschko and UDAR.
The simple fact UDAR is not associated or involved with either Yanukovych or Tymoshenko is appealing to many, who have equal contempt for both.
For UDAR to come to some grubby little deal with the United Opposition that will deprive the Ukrainian voter of voting for an UDAR candidate in a constituency seat if it is one that is decided a United Opposition candidate will run in, will also not go down well with the Ukrainian voter who wants that serious 3rd choice - and more and more are wanting that choice. Likewise devout Tymoshenko voters will not appreciate being forced to vote for UDAR in a seat whereby the United Opposition candidate bows out. It is simply undemocratic.
It is to be hoped UDAR will refuse these desperate United Opposition overtures once again, as it will serve them well in elections yet to come in the years ahead, to remain completely independent and a genuine 3rd choice.
Anything less will ultimately be seen as a sell out - eventually.
Unfortunately, political purity and ideology seem likely to be sacrificed - again - both before and after the elections to short-termism. How much any such decision will affect the opinion polls remains to be seen.
All that said, it is no secret that the Odessa Mayor’s future rests heavily on this election, even though he is not standing for the RADA, and as he has been an abject failure in almost every respect to the great annoyance to his PoR chiefs, I would not be sorry to see the axe fall should UDAR and the United Opposition do better than expected - separately or working in tandem.
Truth be told, regardless of how the elections go in Odessa, I am expecting his retirement on” ill-health grounds” by the year end. There is only so much incompetence blind loyalty can counter-balance, and the causal effects of his incompetence may have a distinct eroding effect on the PoR vote in Odessa.