With 312 incumbent lawmakers seeking re-election to the 450-seat parliament on major party lists and in single election districts, there is at least one political force whose candidate list is filled exclusively with fresh political blood.
The Samopomich (or Self-Reliance) party, led by Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovy, claims to be the one political force that unites the activists who cares about the country.
They boast a number of Western-educated professionals, entrepreneurs and civic activists. Among those are Hanna Hopko, democratic activist; Yehor Sobolev, a Ukrainian journalist who heads Ukraine’s Lustration Committee; and Oksana Syroid of the Ukrainian Legal Foundation.
The party has 61 registered candidates, some 25 percent of them are women.
Vitaliy Bala, a head of the Situations Modeling Agency, a consultancy, said that Samopomich “has a good chance to do something in a parliament. A positive sign is that this political force also has no former lawmakers on the list.”
Chesno civic movement, which promotes openness and accountability in politics, called Samopomich one of the most transparent parties. The party gave complete candidate biographies, including annual financial reports.
The party started the campaign with some 1.3 percent of support, according to the polls, but ended up with 8.5 percent, according to the latest poll presented by Democratic Initiatives Foundation on Oct. 22. This would give them up to 20 seats in a new parliament.
Their ratings came as a surprise to some experts. “A strong party list and effective election campaign” were the key elements of success, Iryna Bekeshkina, who heads the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, told the Kyiv Post. “Also there’s a demand for new people in parliament.”
Hanna Hopko, who runs number one on the party list, doesn’t think of Samopomich as a “new” party.
“The idea of Samopomich appeared 10 years ago (with Sadovy, who started a non-governmental organization by that name in 2004), and since then we have been working on strengthening local government,” Hopko explains.
Their slogan is “take action and do it” and most of the people on the list proved it, according to Hopko.
“I’d say it’s chain of responsible people,” Hopko said. “Our candidates run IT companies and have their own projects, and they are ready to be ministers because they have all (qualifications) for it, as it comes with good education and experience.”
Hopko, 32, along with her colleagues, gathered a platform of more than 150 experts from different fields to design and monitor the implementation of a wide-ranging package of reforms. She was the coordinator of the initiative “For a Smoke-Free Ukraine,” which successfully lobbied for a law that bans smoking in public premises, including nightclubs, hotels, restaurants, airports starting in 2012.
Hopko explains that the biggest benefit of the party list is that “every person we have is an expert in particular sphere.” She says there is also no cult of personality in the party.
Their campaign tour includes a number of eastern and western Ukrainian cities and helped them to “understand what’s going on,” according to Hopko. The activist-turned-politician is certain there will be “a real war” in a parliament over genuine reform.
Samopomich, however, has focused on key priorities.
Yehor Sobolev, No. 13 on the party list, who represented the party during a political debate broadcast on First National TV channel on Oct. 22, said one of the priorities is to strengthen Ukraine’s defense potential, have a “strong army and safe technologically equipped border with Russia,” Sobolev explained.
Sobolev said that “we owe a lot to Ukrainian army,” including working for a cease-fire he added.
Hopko agrees that defense issues matters the most for the party and “Ukrainians must learn from this war and finally come up with a good army so no one would attack us,” she explains.
It explains why the party has people with military backgrounds, represented mostly by Donbas Battalion fighters, with Semen Semenchenko, the battalion commander, who is number two on the list, and Yaroslav Markevych and Pavlo Kishkar, also of the same battalion.
Volodymyr Panchenko, the expert of the International Center for Policy Studies, is not happy with the military presence in the party.
“But it’s a trend now and Samopomich was the first one to include fighters on the list,” Panchenko says, adding that well-known names may help the new party to get into the parliament.
Panchenko sees the potential in Samopomich party and says he was amazed with Samopomich people who made it to the Kyiv City Council after the elections that took place in May. “That group has really bright minds,” the expert says. Currently there are five lawmakers from Samopomich in the City Council.
Sobolev also stressed the party knows what to do in parliament.
While answering the question about Ukraine’s economic potential, Sobolev stressed Ukraine shouldn’t play the raw exports role anymore and should start “producing competitive goods, especially machinery” which can be possible if the tax environment changes. Another potential sector Ukraine should develop is IT, Sobolev says.
At least two people from Samopomich party run major IT companies, including Oleksiy Skrypnyk, the head of Lviv-based Eleks Software company, No 3 on the list, and Oleksandr Danchenko of Datagroup, who runs 9th.
Hopko said he hopes professionals will make it to the parliament this time, because the EuroMaidan Revolution, or “the Revolution of Dignity goes on and it’s important to know those change-makers and state builders will have a chance to bring hope to the country,” Hopko says.
Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Goncharova can be reached at [email protected]
