Caution, Poltava — Mamay Is Rushing Back to Power

Caution, Poltava — Mamay Is Rushing Back to Power

Quarantine is one thing, but prospective candidates haven’t forgotten about the upcoming elections and are persistently reminding people of themselves. For example, this spring Oleksandr Mamay has returned to an old tune — handing out food packages. He’s planning to run again and is actively seeking party support, turning sometimes to former party colleagues — “regionals” — and sometimes to possible financial backers.

It’s almost a sign now — if Mamay is handing out sugar and buckwheat and telling many stories (mostly not entirely true), it means he’s set his sights on the mayor’s chair again. So, be careful, Poltava — another “Mamay raid” is being prepared!

Does the spiritual capital of Ukraine deserve such a leader? An ignoramus, a swindler, a person virtually without principles or morality? Did the two previous terms of Mamay teach the people of Poltava nothing?

People say memory is short. Still, it’s worth recalling the stages of Oleksandr Mamay’s political path. As they say, nothing personal, just the facts.

The first “run.” Election 2010.

Oleksandr Mamay won the mayoral election in 2010 running on the slogan “Let’s return conscience to power.” He won voters over by distributing food packages to pensioners.

As leader of the NGO “Our Home — Poltava,” the candidate set up playgrounds in courtyards and sent schoolchildren on free excursions around Ukraine. A free newspaper, “The First Poltava,” circulated in the city, in whose pages Mamay criticized his opponent Andriy Matkovskyi and liberally sprinkled his own promises.

Although in the mayoral race in 2010 Mamay registered as nonpartisan, he was supported by the party “Conscience of Ukraine” — a political project of Volodymyr Groysman.

This was not Mamay’s first foray into politics. In 2006 Oleksandr Mamay already ran for the Poltava Regional Council from the party “Pora,” of which he was then a member, and for the post of mayor. However, he lost the early mayoral election in the fall of 2006.

Mamay’s victory in 2010 was brought by the support of a billionaire native of Poltava, founder and owner of the agricultural holding Kernel, Andriy Verevskyi. Mamay didn’t hide his business and family ties with Verevskyi, but he categorically denied that Verevskyi financed his campaign.

Mamay, at that time a person even without higher education, had numerous PR people craft an image of him as a progressive businessman, millionaire, and philanthropist who rose from street sweeper and guard to owner of the company Inter-Agro.

The official declaration of that time showed that in 2009 he earned 23 thousand hryvnias, and owned only a GAZ truck and a trailer. His only significant asset then was a bank account balance of 200 thousand hryvnias. No apartments, no cars… A homeless man, you might say…

Apparently Mamay drove a truck. Although the now-former mayor was often seen in luxury foreign cars. In particular, he drove a Lexus that was stolen near a local church in 2014.

Loud but empty campaign promises

Analyzing Mamay’s program in 2015, journalists from the online publication Poltavshchyna recalled Mamay’s most high-profile statements dated to 2010, using the archive of the newspaper The First Poltava.

Among the usual political promises were some rather original claims: to build a dairy plant, to repair roads “conscientiously,” to open a waste processing plant, to provide affordable housing for Poltava residents, to establish a city network of stores selling “social” bread.

Of the above, in 2011–2013 Mamay managed to do major repairs on only a few roads; active asphalt resurfacing by municipal workers began only in 2015 — an election year. A few houses were built in the city under the “Affordable Housing” program, funded mostly from the state budget and only partially by the city. The dairy plant and, even more so, the waste processing plant, Poltava residents never saw. By the way, residents of the village Makukhivka near Poltava, where all the city’s garbage is taken, are convinced that the landfill there benefits Mamay.

In July 2012, Mamay joined the Party of Regions, which completely negated his earlier promises to voters to work exclusively for the city community without big politics. “When one party is in power, the country will have order. The country should be governed by a single political force,” Mamay explained his change of rhetoric at the time.

Immediately after his election victory, Oleksandr Mamay promised to set his and his first deputy Vyacheslav Stetsenko’s salary at 1 hryvnias, saying they were already well-off and would save the city budget. The saved funds would go to bonuses for city council employees.

But for some reason the mayor changed his mind and went the opposite way — raising bonuses for himself and his deputies.

And, as journalists later discovered, during all of Mamay’s years in office his salary repeatedly set records. In 2014 Oleksandr Mamay received the highest mayoral salary among his peers — over 226 thousand hryvnias, even exceeding the income of then Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who received only 182 thousand hryvnias in 2014. And in 2018, without losing momentum, he even outpaced the mayors of million-plus cities: Kyiv, Dnipro and Lviv.

Corruption, scandal, courts and… back to the elections!

The party “Conscience of Ukraine,” from which Mamay ran in 2010, won an absolute majority of seats in the city council, enabling decisions favorable to Mamay to be passed unanimously. That Andriy Verevskyi “forged” Mamay’s victory in the 2010 election became clear immediately, since half of the city council deputies from “Conscience” came from Kernel Trade structures, including the billionaire’s younger brother Ruslan Verevskyi.

It’s worth emphasizing that Mamay was almost the only ruler of Poltava who had virtually unlimited power in his hands: his own majority in the city and all district councils! One would think there would be no obstacles and Poltava would flourish! But somehow it didn’t…

Among the deputies, besides Verevskyi’s people and Mamay’s former subordinates from Inter-Agro, was the mayor’s stepdaughter, entrepreneur Iryna Klymko. Her rapid business successes became the basis for corruption accusations against the mayor, which turned into court cases. At a city council session in May 2013, entrepreneur Iryna Klymko received permission from deputies to simultaneously install a large number of trading kiosks in the city. Mayor Mamay, who chaired the session, did not declare a conflict of interest when that decision was made.

The prosecutor’s office in 2014 opened an administrative case on this fact and sent it to the Oktyabrsky District Court of Poltava. Hearings in this case lasted more than a year. Mamay repeatedly failed to appear in court, calling the case against him commissioned, and accused the judge who considered it of bias.

To serve summonses the police searched for the mayor. Once he was detained and forcibly brought to a hearing. Then the ex-mayor and judge Larysa Holnyk accused each other of attempting to bribe, and in the end the judge recused herself. Other colleagues of Larysa Holnyk refused to try Mamay, so the case was transferred to the Reshetylivka District Court.

A few weeks before the decisive vote on November 15 the judge Leonid Berkuta closed the case, because the statute of limitations had expired. So Mamay was able to run in the next election. Otherwise, his corrupt past, according to the law, would have barred him.

Aside from the kiosk story involving the mayor’s stepdaughter, a number of enterprises in the city controlled by Mamay’s circle are associated with his name.

After coming to power, Mamay, according to local media, began redistributing city markets and parking lots. Private retail spaces and sites over 2011–2012 years were transferred to the municipal enterprise “Poltava-Service.” A few years later it unexpectedly transferred the right to manage communal property to a private firm with a similar name, “Poltava-Soiuz,” which belonged to deputy of the then Leninsky district council from Mamay’s party “Conscience of Ukraine,” Mykola Sirovskyi. Journalists tried to find the “Poltava-Soiuz” office, but their attempts were fruitless.

In 2015 the municipal enterprise controlled by Mamay, the “Road Maintenance Division,” conducted a tender to purchase and install new stops around the city. 80 structures were purchased for 3,6 million hryvnias, which is about 45 thousand hryvnias per polycarbonate unit. The tender had violations and the price was considerably inflated.

The Road Maintenance Division was unofficially controlled by a deputy from “Conscience of Ukraine” (2010–2015 years), a man close to Oleksandr Mamay, who at that time worked at the municipal enterprise as deputy director. Later the enterprise entered bankruptcy proceedings that continue to this day. Meanwhile, its equipment is used by private contractor organizations with which Mamay allegedly coordinated this scheme in advance.

As we can see, everywhere there was even the slightest opportunity to siphon money from the budget into the mayor’s pocket, it was seized by people close to Mamay. And that’s only speaking of officially proven cases — how many known but “less official” ones were there?

Election campaign — 2015. The second “run.”

For the next election Mamay ran even without a program. Why bother? There was plenty of sugar. A special trolleybus stop even appeared in Poltava near the office of the NGO “Conscience of Ukraine,” colloquially nicknamed “Sugar.”

To win the 2015 election, Oleksandr Mamay used the same technology as in 2010. Only instead of buckwheat he handed pensioners 8 kilograms of sugar. Admittedly, he did it on behalf of the NGO “Conscience of Ukraine,” which was founded in Poltava the same 2015 at the address Kahamlyk Street, 66.

How much the candidate spent on the campaign in 2015 is unknown. Mamay’s campaign headquarters and the party “Conscience of Ukraine” did not open election fund accounts as required by law.

The cost of distributing sugar to pensioners can be estimated from the price of white sugar (at period prices) and the number of registered pension-age residents in the city. The approximate sum is about 420 000 US dollars.

Ultimately, the funds did their job. In the first round Mamay gained 24 thousand 214 votes (22,98%). However, turnout was only 46%.

From election to election, Poltava residents grow more disillusioned with the voting process, because, thanks to Mamay’s “efforts,” they view voting as a sham and the results as pre-bought. This despite the fact that in reality, from the total number of the city’s voters in the first round Mamay received support from only 11% of Poltava residents! In the second round — 24,7% (with turnout 39,5%).

Scandal. Distrust. Resignation. Court. Party change.

In short, that’s roughly how Mamay’s next term can be described.

His second mayoralty wasn’t as long, because there was no longer a compliant majority in the council.

On 4 September 2018 the deputies of the Poltava City Council declared Oleksandr Mamay’s work unsatisfactory and terminated his powers early.

Mamay tried to be reinstated, appealed (now as the aggrieved party) to the courts, but lost at all instances. Unknown persons twice unlawfully made changes in the Registry and reinstated Mamay as mayor of Poltava. There were suspicions (not unfounded!) that the mayor himself stole the city council’s seal after being dismissed.

Such disgrace could have kept someone away from power for a long time. But not Mamay!

He actively sought a political force to take him “under its wing.” And he found one. Vadym Rabinovych publicly promised across Ukraine that he would not let the mayor of Poltava be “offended”! Then Oleksandr Mamay headed the regional branch of OPZZh, and soon, in the same 2019 year, Mamay became a trusted agent of presidential candidate Yuriy Boyko in electoral district 144 (Poltava city).

However, in the parliamentary elections of the 9 convocation Mamay ran as a candidate in district 144 in Poltava as… nonpartisan and self-nominated.

He ran his campaign by the usual script: concerts and gifts.

But he lost.

What else did Mamay become “famous” for?

They say you can enter history, or you can get stuck in it. Mamay never entered Poltava’s history positively. But he made plenty of blunders!

Mamay is the first leader of Poltava who had no higher education at all. At the dawn of his political career, it was written that he had “unfinished higher education,” but that’s false, because as early as his second year in 1987 he was expelled from the then Construction Institute for academic debt. Only in December 2010, already as mayor, did he enroll in the first year of Poltava State Agrarian Academy (agronomy faculty, correspondence department).

Mamay is a person whom Poltava residents (especially pensioners) have “loved” more than anyone else!

Why be surprised, when officially divorced Oleksandr Mamay cynically boasts of sincere love for his wife and constantly speaks of eternal family values.

Besides treating the city budget as if it were his own pocket, the ex-mayor is known for numerous ostentatious scandals and a bunch of pearls that might have been funny — until you consider how many problems he brought to Poltava.

Public statements by Mamay at sessions such as: “Spring started so early, and everything bloomed in my head, even I’m blossoming,” “Everyone knows that increased personal scholarships for students are paid by Mamay, not the mayor,” “You can call me the worst male organ, as long as you suck,” “Not only Paralympians, but those athletes who more or less work normally should receive scholarships,” — have embarrassed Poltava across Ukraine. People began to refer to us as the spiritual capital with a boor and an ignoramus at the helm.

And now this person is running for mayor again. Of course, our memory is such that important details are always lost somewhere. People think, it wasn’t that bad, etc. However, the fact remains — Mamay and his “Mamay-ism” are things that should stay in the past forever. A past one should not be proud of. One they are ashamed of and want to forget like a bad dream.

Volodymyr Makarenko — publicist