Ukrainians place huge hopes on crucial elections this weekend

KYIV, Ukraine — As Ukrainians prepare to vote in parliamentary elections on Sunday, a broad array of pro-European parties is poised for an easy victory that would lend a final degree of legitimacy to last winter’s bloody street revolution.

But these elections are more about securing the country’s future than providing closure for the recent past.

As the government confronts Russian-backed separatists in the country’s east while seeking to stave off a looming economic crisis, expectations are running high that the vote will help hold the authorities to carrying out promises of sweeping reform that would transform the country’s corrupt political system.

Polls give a bloc led by President Petro Poroshenko a commanding lead with around 30 percent of the decided vote.

Trailing far behind, a collection of new and old political parties includes both dodgy establishment politicians and trusted civic leaders who built their reputations during the months-long protests on Independence Square, or “Maidan.”

The group that once dominated the rubber-stamp parliament — disgraced ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions — has virtually dissolved, although some of its former members have made it into other parties that are bound to win seats.

Critics say allowing that to happen represents only one relatively minor failure by officials who’ve been taken to task even by the Poroshenko administration.

Plagued by mismanagement, the military remains in dire condition as it faces off against the insurgents in eastern Ukraine under an ineffective ceasefire.

Reports abound of lingering corruption in state agencies, which has forced some of the new reformers — who took up ministerial posts on the wave of protests after Yanukovych’s ouster — to resign in frustration.

“In actual fact, the revolution produced changes only in faces and the nameplates on the doors,” says Serhiy Melnychenko, a grassroots political activist who decries what he says has been the slow pace of reforms.

Making good on last winter’s upheaval is especially important after the democratic Orange Revolution of 2004, which ended in vicious political infighting that spread wide disenchantment with politics.

Besides ending the bloodshed in eastern Ukraine, one of the country’s top priorities is guiding the tattered economy out of a downward spiral that’s left the currency devalued nearly 40 percent against the dollar.

It’s an uphill battle given the kind of chaotic order that prevails amid weak institutions and official inaction.

The atmosphere is partly responsible for the success of the Radical Party, led by firebrand nationalist Oleh Lyahsko. It’s set to take second place with up to 12 percent of the vote, thanks to its leader’s outlandish populism and anti-Russian fervor.

His on-camera abuse of suspected crooked officials has helped spawn a wave of street justice in which protesters publicly heap unpopular politicians associated with the old administration into garbage cans.

Critics are worried that more than 40 percent of Ukrainians support the practice, dubbed the “Trash Bucket Challenge,” according to a poll by the Gorshenin Institute, a Kyiv-based think tank.

Nearly as many said they would return to the streets for mass protests if they feel the authorities fail to make good on their promises.

“It’s a very hard thing to control the sea, and that’s what this is: a sea of people, a sea of emotions,” says Vadim Karasyov, head of the Institute for Global Strategies.

Some recent developments may help keep discontent at bay, though.

On Thursday, Poroshenko signed a raft of anti-corruption legislation passed earlier this month, following up on a key demand by protesters.

And after the elections, a new pro-European parliament would theoretically provide broad support for legislation that would meet criteria Western donors have set for providing crucial loans.

Still, days ahead of the vote, there’s little positive energy on the streets as a climate of volatility highlights the many uncertainties plaguing the country.

This past week saw several murky attacks on politicians running for office, while officials have ominously warned of planned attempts by pro-Russian forces to destabilize the vote.

On Thursday morning, the city’s main train station was evacuated after an apparent bomb threat, which locals complain has become a regular occurrence.

“As if we didn’t have enough problems,” grumbled an elderly taxi driver as he sped away in the crisp October air.

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There are also signs that the campaigning is encouraging political forces to keep playing by old rules: The grassroots vote-monitoring group OPORA has already registered nearly 500 electoral violations across the country, including by members of Poroshenko’s own party. And it’s still counting.

That may be partly why some experts are urging caution.

Gwendolyn Sasse, a Ukraine researcher at Carnegie Europe, says the vote represents a necessary step toward formalizing the country’s post-revolutionary leadership.

“But the vote does not provide answers to the many pressing political and economic issues Ukraine currently faces,” she wrote on the think tank’s website on Wednesday.

“It ‘simply’ establishes parts of the political foundations needed to address these issues.”