Servant of the People is a populist political party in Ukraine which was founded on 31 March 2018 by the comedian Ivan Bakanov, who named the party for a 2015-2019 television show produced by the company for which he was a lawyer, Kvartal 95. In 2018, Volodymyr Zelensky ran as the party's presidential nominee, challenging the incumbent President and chocolate businessman Petro Poroshenko; Zelensky won 30.24% of the vote in the first round as compared to Poroshenko's 15.95%, and he was a popular early frontrunner. He won the presidential election with over 70% of the vote, and, in the ensuing parliamentary elections of 21 July 2019, the party won 254 seats in the Verkhovna Rada with 43.16% of the popular vote, crushing Poroshenko's European Solidarity party. The party initially proclaimed libertarianism as its core ideology, but, in November 2019, this was supplanted by a middle road between liberal and socialist views. Following the party's February 2020 congress, the party adopted "Ukrainian centrism" as its ideology. The party was consistently supportive of anti-corruption efforts, direct democracy, and expanded cooperation with the European Union and NATO.
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