You're reading: Who kept their promises in 2007? Who will in 2012?

Ukrainians can be excused for feeling elections are as exciting as boiling potatoes.

Though political parties come and go, the same people getting voted in with the same results.

Party of Regions, Batkivshchyna, Nasha Ukraina (Our Ukraine), the Communists – the same names appear time and again on voting lists, adding to a reservoir of broken promises.

The latest survey by Ukrainian think tank Razumkov shows more than half of Ukrainians (57 percent) say they will look at a candidate’s track record before voting. Yet political analysts are skeptical about the interest of average voters.

“In Ukraine neither people nor media usually monitor performance (in terms of) candidate’s promises,” says political analyst Volodymyr Kornilov. “And politicians can always find the excuses – they lack time, a constitutional majority, get spokes in the wheels etc.,” Kornilov said.

Both the current ruling coalition and opposition have alternated power for the last five years:  the opposition from October 2007 to April 2010 (Nasha Ukraina, Narodna Samooborona and the Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko) and since April 2010, for the ruling coalition (the pro-president Party of Regions, Communist Party, Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn’s bloc).

The Kyiv Post compared past and present election programs of the biggest currently running political parties, marking unfulfilled and fulfilled promises with plus (+) or minus (-) respectively. A plus-minus combo denotes partially fulfillment.

The programs of Vitali Klitschko’s Ukrainian Development Alliance of Reforms and Ukraine-Forward! Party are not included, since they have never held seats in parliament. Various opposition factions have been combined into a single section.



Scorecard of political promises kept and unfulfilled