Opinion: Ukrainians are trying to figure out where the sitcom stops and the election begins
By Anne Applebaum Anne Applebaum Columnist focusing on national politics and foreign policy Email Bio Follow Columnist April 5 Vasiliy the schoolteacher is late for work. He grabs his clock, he jumps out of bed, he shouts at his father, and he begs his mother to iron his shirt. He burns the coffee. He bangs on the door of the bathroom they all share.
It probably hasn’t been said enough, but “Servant of the People,” the Ukrainian television series that has now launched the real-life political career of Volodymyr Zelensky, the actor who plays Vasiliy on the show, is brilliant. It’s just real enough to get viewers engaged and just absurd enough to make them laugh. Its hero, Vasiliy, has been elected because a student has filmed him ranting, profanely, about corruption.
Weird though this saga may sound, it’s unfolding against what observers agree is the background of a relatively free and fair democracy. Those monitoring the first round of elections last weekend observed fewer irregularities than expected. The candidate from the far-right party received less than 2 percent of the vote, a lot less than extremists win in Western countries.
More to the point, there are echoes of his success in supposedly more “mature” democracies, too. Some have compared Zelensky’s tactics to those of President Trump, another TV star who turned his celebrity into a political career and found unorthodox ways to spread his message. But unlike Trump, or Beppe Grillo, the Italian comedian who co-created the Five Star political movement, Zelensky is not seeking to divide people.
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