You're reading: Analyst: Language law unlikely to add rating to Regions Party

The adoption of the law on the principles of state language policy and the signing of it by President Viktor Yanukovych are unlikely to increase the popularity rating of the Regions Party in the upcoming parliamentary elections, Deputy Director of the Situations Modeling Agency Oleksiy Holobutsky has said.

“It’s logical that the president signed this law. He had to do it.
This issue has been discussed for a long time. Will it bear interest? I
doubt very much. Because in terms of priorities, according to surveys,
the language is not in the top ten, and not even in the top twenty,” he
said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine on Wednesday.

Holobutsky also said that it is unlikely there will be big changes in
Ukrainian society in connection due to the implementation of the
language law.

“People who will live for two or three months with this law will
think that nothing has changed in their lives and that a trial won’t be
fairer if they have the right to appeal to court in Russian or any other
minority language. Schools or hospitals won’t be better because of
this. Nothing will be better. That is, nothing will change. So, I think
the effect will be minimal,” the analyst said.

In addition, he noted that various political parties could and would
actively use the adoption of this law in their election campaign.

“But the communists won’t be able to parasitize so zealously on the
Russian language. They won’t take away from the Regions Party as many
[votes] as they could have taken away… But this gives an opportunity to
Svoboda to get into parliament on the rhetoric of the fight against the
law. They will say that they are the only one who will ‘tear a
[traditional Ukrainian] embroidered shirt for the sake of the Ukrainian
language,'” the analyst said.