Posted on 04/19/2019 2:15:16 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
KIEV — It’s said that reality is often stranger than fiction. In Ukraine, a popular comedian is taking both by storm. The 41-year old Volodymyr Zelensky is better known for playing a president in the wildly popular TV show “Servant of the People,” which sees an earnest history teacher unexpectedly thrust into the backstabbing world of Ukrainian politics.
Now Zelensky could have a shot at the real deal as Ukrainians vote in the final round of the presidential election Sunday. The comedian surprised everybody with the scale of his victory in the first round on March 31. His anti-establishment message and creative campaigning have resonated in a country mired in poverty and armed conflict, while deeply disillusioned with its political elite.
Zelensky won the first round with 30 percent of the vote, nearly double the showing of incumbent Petro Poroshenko, the confectionary mogul who has ruled this country of 44 million since 2014. As neither candidate won a majority, the two face off in Sunday’s run-off; the latest opinion polls favor Zelensky.
The comedian would thus become Ukraine’s first Jewish president, making his country the only one outside Israel to have both a Jewish president and prime minister; Volodymyr Groysman took the latter post in April 2016.
What might that mean for Europe’s fourth-largest Jewish community in a country that has sometimes made headlines for anti-Semitism and a resurgent far right? Does it mean anything at all?
(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...
Imagine that: a country that used to be infamous for pogroms against the Jewish people will soon elect a Jewish President because he’s the most incorruptible candidate.
Who knows, maybe someday Germany will have a Jewish chancellor to save them from the Muslim hordes.
He sure sounds good. I hope he’s even half as honest as he’s reputed tyo be. (So many folks who go into politics aren’t ..)
My paternal grandfather, the victim of plenty of anti-semitism in his Ukrainian birthplace in the early 1900s, would be extremely amused by this turn of events.
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