REVIEW - Iron Lady Tymoshenko Launches 3rd Bid For Ukrainian Presidency

KIEV (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd January, 2019) Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the leader of pro-European party Batkivshchina (Fatherland) party, on Tuesday officially launched her third bid for the country's presidency.

On Tuesday, Batkivshchina approved Tymoshenko's nomination as its candidate for the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election.

Tymoshenko has very good chances to become the president, as, according to opinion polls, she has been heading the pre-election rating for several months now. According to Tymoshenko herself, in politics she follows the advice of former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to "never give up."

The presidential election in Ukraine will be held on March 31. The election campaign officially started on December 31, 2018. The nomination of candidates and the submission of documents for registration to the Central Electoral Commission began on the same day.

Tymoshenko was born was born Yulia Hrihyan on November 27, 1960 in the Soviet Ukrainian city of Dnepropetrovsk, which is now named Dnipro. She graduated from the economics department of Dnepropetrovsk State University with labor economics degree. In 1979, she married businessman Oleksandr Tymoshenko, and their daughter, Yevhenia, was born a year later. In 1999, she defended her PhD dissertation, becoming a candidate of economic sciences.

She came into politics from the energy business, her corporation Ukrainskyi Benzyn (Ukrainian Petrol Company, KUB) was buying and selling fuel and lubricants. Later, United Energy Systems of Ukraine was established on the basis of KUB.

In 1997, Tymoshenko was first elected as a lawmaker of the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, having won the by-election in the district in the Kirovograd region, gaining a record 92.3 percent of the vote.

In 1998, Tymoshenko joined the party of the former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, All-Ukrainian Association Community (�Hromada), which was in opposition to then-President Leonid Kuchma. A year later, Tymoshenko, together with other politicians, including the current Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksandr Turchynov, created Batkivshchyna party.

After Kuchma was re-elected in 1999 to his second term, Tymoshenko became the deputy prime minister of fuel and energy. She introduced a series of reforms in the electricity area, aimed at eliminating barter schemes and the shift to cash transactions.

Tymoshenko resigned as the deputy prime minister in January 2001. She took an active part in the Ukraine Without Kuchma mass protest campaign.

In 2003, Tymoshenko's popularity was so high that people started talking about her chances to compete for the presidency. However, Tymoshenko decided to create a coalition with Viktor Yushchenko, who won the early presidential election, which followed the so-called Orange Revolution in 2004. The new president appointed Tymoshenko as his prime minister. Tymoshenko was dismissed from this post seven months later. At this time Ukraine was shaken by "petrol" and "sugar" crises, and disagreements between Tymoshenko and Yushchenko deepened.

In the parliamentary elections of 2006, the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc won 22.3 percent of the vote and ranked second after the Party of Regions. Tymoshenko became the prime minister again. In 2008, the financial crisis hit the world, including Ukraine.

In 2008, following the talks between Tymoshenko and then-Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the two countries signed a gas contract, which later put the Ukrainian politician in prison.

There were two attempts to send Tymoshenko behind bars. For the first time Tymoshenko was arrested in 2001 over allegations that her company United Energy Systems of Ukraine was smuggling Russian gas to Ukraine in 1995-1997. Tymoshenko then spent more than 40 days in the pretrial detention center. Later the court found the accusations to be unjustified.

A number of criminal cases, including the so-called "gas case," were brought against Tymoshenko after Viktor Yanukovych won the presidential election in 2010. Tymoshenko was accused of causing damage to the state budget in the amount of 100 billion hryvnia ($3.5 billion).

In addition, on April 11, 2011, Ukraine's then-deputy prosecutor general Renat Kuzmin announced the decision to open a new criminal case against Tymoshenko, as "she abused her power and exceeded her official authority" in concluding the gas agreements with Russia in 2009.

A Kiev court found Tymoshenko guilty and sentenced her to seven years in prison. She was sent to a penal colony in the country's Kharkov region. Tymoshenko was freed after a coup d'etat in 2014.

Tymoshenko will compete for the presidency for the third time in 2019. In 2010, she narrowly lost to Yanukovych in the runoff with a gap of 3.48 percent of the vote, while in 2014 she came in second in the first round, losing to Petro Poroshenko, who secured almost 55 percent of the vote.

In the summer of 2018, Tymoshenko announced her intention to run for president for the third time.

"I will run for the presidency of Ukraine... You see, the presidential position and election, in general, is not a PlayStation for me. This is a real change that the country is looking for," she said.

According to estimates by the Committee of Voters of Ukraine public organization, the Batkivshchyna party has already spent around 100 million hryvnias on advertising Tymoshenko's election program.

Tymoshenko and her team have developed a program called "the new country's course" in order to take part in the election. First of all, the ex-prime minister promised to halve the price for gas, which the current government has increased at the request of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

To solve the conflict in Donbas, Tymoshenko intends to form a military cabinet. She promised to announce its composition shortly before the election.

In addition, to resolve the situation in eastern Ukraine, Tymoshenko promises to convene a summit in the "Budapest Plus" format to adopt a peace strategy.

Fight against corruption as also among Tymoshenko's promises.

According to opinion polls, Tymoshenko has been leading in the election rating for several months. According to experts, in the second round, Tymoshenko's rival will be Poroshenko.

Ukraine's former president Leonid Kravchuk has highly assessed Tymoshenko's chances to win the election.

"I have known Yulia Vladimirovna [Tymoshenko] for 22 years. These were the years of struggling, thinking, searching. These were years of doubt ... I know her as an educated person, as a sincere and strong person who stood very great trials on her way. Today she is called the best manager. I agree with this, but I have something to add. She is a master of such science, which is called human science," Kravchuk said at the Batkivshchyna party meeting.

At the same time, Yuriy Lutsenko, the Ukrainian prosecutor general and former associate of Tymoshenko, believes that the former prime minister would be dangerous for Ukraine as a president due to her unpredictability.