Omelchenko Alexander

Biography of Alexander Omelchenko

Date of Birth: 09.08.1938

Place of Birth. Education. Born in the village of Zozov in the Lipovets district of Vinnytsia region. In 1959, he graduated from the Kyiv Construction Technical School. In 1974, he graduated from the Kyiv Engineering and Construction Institute, and in 1978 from the Kyiv Institute of National Economy. He holds a PhD in Technical Sciences.

Career. From 1959 to 1961, he worked as a concrete worker at the construction plant of the Kyiv Oblstroytrust, then served in the army and was the senior master of the precast concrete workshop at the same construction plant.

From 1961 to 1980, he worked as a master, deputy head of the workshop, head of the workshop, and then - head of the department, chief engineer, director of the building materials plant No. 1 of the building materials plant No. 1, chief engineer of the building materials plant No. 1 of Holovkyivhorrabuda.

From 1980 to 1987, he was the first deputy head - chief engineer of Holovkyivhorrabuda.

From 1987 to 1989, he was a consultant-advisor in the Republic of Afghanistan.

In 1989, he was the chief engineer of Ukrbud in the Armenian SSR (during the restoration of settlements destroyed by the earthquake).

From 1989 to 1990, he was the head of the Directorate of Construction Industry, Industrial Construction Materials and Standardization of Holovstroy of the Ukrainian SSR.

From 1990 to 1992, he was the deputy chairman of the executive committee of the Kyiv City Council of People's Deputies.

From 1992 to 1994, he was the general director of GP Kyiv Reconstruction.

From 1994 to 1996, he was the deputy chairman, the first deputy chairman of the Kyiv City State Administration.

Since August 1996, he has been the head of the Kyiv City State Administration.

From May 1999 to April 2006, he served as the mayor of Kyiv.

From 1999 to 2006, he was the president of the Association of Cities of Ukraine.

From 2007 to 2012, he was a member of the Ukrainian parliament of the VI convocation, elected to the parliament from the Our Ukraine - People's Self-Defense bloc (through the quota of People's Self-Defense of Yuriy Lutsenko). He was the chairman of the Committee of the Verkhovna Rada on State Construction and Local Self-Governance.

In the autumn of 2012, he ran for the Verkhovna Rada of the VII convocation in the single-mandate constituency No. 220 in Kyiv, however, two weeks before the elections, he submitted a request to the Central Election Commission to withdraw his candidacy from registration.

Since May 2014, he has been a deputy of the Kyiv City Council of the VII convocation.

In the mayoral elections in Kyiv in 2015, he took 3rd place, gathering 8.47% of the votes from the electorate. He was also re-elected as a deputy of the Kyiv City Council of the VIII convocation under the first number on the list of the Unity party.

According to the results of the elections on October 25, 2020, Alexander Omelchenko was elected a deputy of the Kyiv City Council of the IX convocation from the Unity party. The Unity party passed to the Kyiv City Council, gaining 8.74% of the votes.

Views and Assessments. The attitude of citizens, political opponents, and experts towards Alexander Omelchenko is ambiguous. Among the reviews, one can hear both praise for the boom in construction, improvement of infrastructure, and the image of the capital, as well as criticism for non-transparent distribution of land resources, secrecy and nepotism in the distribution of multimillion municipal orders, excessive activity of the bureaucratic apparatus, and the dubiousness of some architectural decisions.

The political ambitions of the politician have always been high, but far from always, especially in recent years, have voters understood and supported them.

From 2001 to 2005, Omelchenko led the party he created, Unity. In the parliamentary elections of 2002, his eponymous electoral bloc tried to 'storm' the Verkhovna Rada, but did not reach the relatively low passing barrier.

In 2004, he was nominated by party members for the post of president of Ukraine, running a campaign under the slogan 'Today - people's mayor, tomorrow - people's president!'. He garnered 0.48% of the votes from the electors, significantly less than in the previously won mayoral elections in the capital.

In 2006, Omelchenko ran for the position of governor of the capital, hoping for the support of Kyiv residents, not paying too much attention to the election campaign. As a result, unexpectedly for himself, he took only third place, losing to the honorary president of Pravex Bank Leonid Chernovetsky and Vitali Klitschko, a well-known heavyweight boxer, with whom he had friendly relations before the elections.

According to observers, little could be expected from winning the 2006 elections in terms of new and effective approaches to the development of the capital. Since often Alexander Omelchenko's authoritarian management methods, which worked well in the 1990s, do not meet today’s requirements for the development of the strategic region of the country.

In 2007, he suffered defeat in the election campaign of the Alexander Omelchenko Bloc for mandates in the Kyiv City Council.

Despite everything, Omelchenko has been and remains (though not in his former form) an influential politician, whom many prefer not to befriend, but at least not to quarrel with. By the way, as reported by the media, in the emergency parliamentary elections of 2007, Omelchenko’s inclusion in the passing quota of People's Self-Defense only occurred in exchange for his renunciation of his ambitions for the mayor in the upcoming city elections.

Awards. Hero of Ukraine (with the award