n
three weeks’ time, on the last Sunday of October, Ukrainians will elect
450 members of the new parliament, half of them from the national party
list, and half from territorial districts. Opinion polls reveal more or
less equal support for both the pro-government forces (Party of Regions
and Communists – 25 and 9 per cent respectively) and opposition (Yulia
Tymoshenko’s Motherland and Vitaliy Klychko’s Udar – 15 and 17 per cent) http://www.gfknop.com/pressinfo/releases/singlearticles/010454/index.en.html.
This means that the remaining one third of votes will be cast for the
plethora of minor parties that have virtually no chances to surpass the 5
per cent threshold. All these votes will be distributed proportionally
among the winners. In fact, it is a gift for the incumbents since most
of the minor parties below the threshold represent the opposition.
Lack
of unity is a persistent problem of Ukrainian democrats, and is
especially harmful vis-a-vis the monolithic unity of the authoritarian
rulers. Admittedly, their unity is not based on any positive ideology
but primarily on sharing the spoils and suppressing dissent by various
means—from bribery and persuasion to media censorship and manipulation,
blackmail, intimidation, and selective application of the law. Enormous
resources extracted from budget loopholes and the shadow economy make
the Party of Regions a formidable force, quite competitive on the party
list (despite its disastrous social and economic policies) and
unbeatable in the territorial districts where vote buying reigns
supreme.
To
make a bad situation worse, the new electoral law not only increased
the threshold from 3 to 5 per cent, targeting primarily the opposition
parties but also introduced the “first-past-the-post” system within the
majoritarian districts that require a simple plurality, rather than a
clear majority of votes to win. This system allows the incumbents not to
worry too much about their popularity—20 per cent of their core
electorate might suffice if their opponents are successfully split,
dispersed, and pitted against each other. To this end, a numerous fake
parties and “technical” candidates are registered with the goal to spoil
the electoral process in multiple ways. As many as 3,109 candidates
will compete for 225 mandates in the majoritarian districts: nearly 14
persons per seat. And, tellingly, there are only 389 women compared to
2,720 men, 67 less than five years ago when women were also badly
underrepresented. Predictably, very few candidates are economists,
lawyers, or professional policy makers. Instead, 1,082 of them are
businessmen of different calibers, which is common practice in a country
in which the only protection for businessmen is parliamentary immunity,
and where the most profitable business is looting state resources and
exploiting legal loopholes http://dt.ua/POLITICS/mazhoritarka_desyat_rokiv_po_tomu-108785.html.
Whereas
businessmen and various state officials are serious contenders, a huge
number of drivers, secretaries, night guards, barmen, and unemployed
persons (293 this time) are playing the traditional role of spoilers.
Some of them, incidentally, have the same surnames and even full names
as opposition frontrunners in their districts; many others play a modest
auxiliary role by promoting their representatives into election
commissions to ensure the total preponderance of the authorities in
electoral bodies. And, on the party list, one may observe the same
phenomenon: a group of unknown parties mushrooming during elections,
often with very peculiar names like “Our Motherland” (surely not to be
confused with Yulia Tymoshenko’s “Motherland”?).
Still,
a simple majority in the parliament is hardly the main prize for which
the Party of Regions deploys its unscrupulous methods. After the 2004
constitutional amendments were arbitrarily cancelled, Ukraine became
once again a presidential republic with a minor role for the
legislature. Second, as we already saw in 2002, 2006, and, most recently
2010, the Party of Regions can easily muster a parliamentary majority
by carrots and sticks, neither of which are in short supply.
The
real problem it faces face (not only in Ukraine) is the succession of
power. One may easily win the first-past-the-post contest with a mere 20
per cent of vote if proper “technologies” are applied, but no
technology can secure a victory in the nationwide elections of president
where a clear majority of votes is required. For Viktor Yanukovych,
with ratings below 20 per cent and little chance of rising, the only way
to get re-elected for a second term and secure his “Family’s” dubious
wealth is to change the national constitution and arrange his own
re-election via an obedient parliament rather than through the
electorate. It was with this goal in mind that the so-called
constitutional assembly was created last year from the handpicked
“specialists” (the opposition refused to participate, feeling the trap).
Thus, most likely, we shall witness a bold attempt to muster a
qualified majority of two-thirds of MPs in the next parliament, enabling
it to change the constitution and solve Yanukovych’s problem of
reelection in 2015.
The
opposition is doomed to lose not only because the entire electoral
field has been systemically fixed to the incumbents’ advantage and
because most of the “independents” in the parliament will be (as usual)
businessmen susceptible to the authorities’ blackmail and siding
typically with the victors. The opposition is losing because it has
committed too many mistakes, of which the most profound was the failure
to draw the proper conclusions from the Orange defeat, to dismiss its
leaders and reshuffle cadres, to change programs and rhetoric, and to
pay due attention to grass-root movements and party-building. They
failed to get rid of their own fat cats and dolce vita habits, to bring
in new faces and develop a new image. They never bothered even to say
“sorry” to their frustrated and disappointed electorate. The main
problem of the Ukrainian opposition is that its leaders are broadly
perceived as almost as bad as the incumbents; people may vote for them
as a lesser evil, but are unlikely to be committed wholesale to their
victory.
The strong advance of Vitaliy Klitschko’s party Udar,
which emerged from the blue as a one-person project, is clear proof of
the popular need for new faces, new forces, and new policies completely
detached from the corrupted and feckless practices of the past. In a
recent survey, UDAR (the “blow”–it is also the acronym of the Ukrainian
Democratic Alliance for Reforms) outran Tymoshenko’s Motherland, dogged
by imprisonment of the leader, slandering in the pro-government media,
and undermined by the enforced change of the name from the popular ByUT
(Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko) to the virtually unknown Motherland (after the
new law barred electoral blocks from running). More and more people seem
to invest their political hopes in the heavyweight boxer—hardly a
charismatic figure— whose main advantage is that he has never belonged
to the Ukrainian establishment, has no record of corruption, and
seemingly represents a different, hopefully Western, political culture.
Klitschko
has received a significant advance payment from the electorate, but it
remains to be seen how he and his party pay it back. He supports
liberal-democratic ideas and insists on the need for a complete renewal
of Ukrainian political life but, at the same time, avoids harsh rhetoric
and personal attacks. This might be a signal not only to his supporters
and allies but also to rivals, at least those who are tired and
frustrated with current politics, unrestrained greed and lawlessness of
the “Family,” and the increasing international isolation of the country.
In one of UDAR’s ads, a rapper sings about the kind of president
Ukraine really needs. At present we are electing MPs, but the song
sounds like another suggestion on how to solve the problem: 2015.
Mykola Riabchuk is a Ukrainian author and journalist. This article
is reprinted with the author’s permission. It originally appeared in
Current Politics in Ukraine at Stasiuk Program for the Study of Contemporary Ukraine, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies.
