PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS IN UKRAINE

September 30 was a day of early elections to Ukraine’s parliament, which since the Soviet times mantains the former name “Supreme Soviet” (of course, it does not mean that there is a Soviet power in Ukraine). Even after the month the official results of elections were not yet announced (futher I’ll explain why), but it is already known how many mandates have received each Party. “Orange” forces (openly pro-Western nationalist parties which have arranged in Kiev in 2004 the so-called «orange revolution» when president-elect Janukovich was accused of falsification) have the majority in 2 (!) mandates and in principle can form a Government.

Such business is quite difficult and can be delayed even more. In fact the only winner of present elections became not their initiator, president Jushchenko (his block added only 0,2 percent of votes), but a block of pro-Western populist Julia Timoshenko. During rather effective election campaign this block promised citizens to return in two years their deposits in savings banks which was burned down because of inflation, has pushed “on the tenth place” (of course, for a while) an unpleasant question on the introduction into NATO etc. As a result the correlation of forces among “oranges” has sharply changed: the presidential block has received only 14 percent of voices, but Timoshenko’s block – nearly 31. If the president’s Party will really enter a governmental coalition which will nominate Timoshenko to a post of the prime minister (it’s her main condition), in such coalition it will be only the younger partner, and the political future of Mr. Jushchenko will be under a big question.

In general all participants of the agreement on early parliamentary elections only have lost from it (this agreement was concluded by president Jushchenko, prime minister Janukovich and chairman of parliament, leader of Socialist party Alexander Moroz). We already spoke about Mr. Jushchenko. The Party of the former speaker was at all left in the basket – it not went through the three-percent barrier. As to the Janukovich’s Party of Regions, it won for itself two percents of the votes (now it has 34 percent), but lost a strong coalition majority which it had in a former composition of parliament. Of course it is possible to blame for this American poitical consultants of Janukovich, which not fully understand our post-Soviet reality. It is also possible to be puzzled, why Janukovich at all has agreed on early elections for which there were no legal grounds, though Mr. Jushchenko could not disband the former Supreme Soviet, however hard he tried.

I’ll remind you as events developed. At the beginning of April the president of Ukraine Jushchenko has published a decree about dissolution of parliament and assignment of early parliamentary elections. For what reason? Some of “orange” deputies passed to other parliamentary factions, that allegedly have broken the will of voters for which the president stands firm. By European standards such reason seems rather ridiculous, and of course under the norms of Ukrainian Constitution Jushchenko had not any rights to do so.

Till now nobody understand why all this venture was necessary for Jushchenko. His block had not any hopes to win early election, experts unanimously predicted that in result of the voting its position in relation to block of Timoshenko will considerably weaken (and this actually happened).

The parliament, in which a ruling coalition, composed of Party of Regions, compromising Communist Party and Socialists, had more than 60 percent of deputy mandates, naturally, has refused to make political suicide and has not obeyed to decree about its dissolution. Then Jushchenko tried to solve this problem by force and at the end of May sent troops to Kiev (ostensibly to support the order), but the military have refused to carry out such orders. In effect, the adventure of Jushchenko has completely failed, but unexpectedly to his rescue went … the prime-minister Janukovich. After night negotiations between the president, prime minister and chairman of parliament the agreement on carrying out early parliamentary elections on September 30 has been achieved.

Politologists frequently note an inclination of the present Ukrainian prime-minister to solve political problems not by the open struggle, but by some secret negotiations. Alas, this time such inclination also did a bad turn for Janukovich. What actually wanted the prime-minister? There is an impression that he simply wanted a quiet life, wished to drop out of the crisis in which he felt uncertainly (though the situation obviously developed for his benefit).

At the beginning of this article I mentioned that official results of elections were not announced till now. The cause of such situation is that a compromising Communist Party of Ukraine (it has received 5 percent of votes) has submitted a legal action, demanding to recognize election results invalid. Alas, falsifications really took place, and first of all in favour of “oranges”. For example, it’s very suspicious that in a number of Western regions of the country, which traditionally vote for nationalists, the turnout of voters has ostensibly made 80-85 % (whereas more than half of their population is on earnings abroad).

Objectively this suit plays into the hands of the Party of Regions which does not want to go to opposition and continues to maneuver. Considering unscrupulousness of a great bulk of participants of this political bargaining, everything is possible, including the most unexpected variants. Places in the Ukrainian parliament have shared between “oranges” and not-oranges practically fifty-fifty. The correlation of forces is rather shaky and a great deal depends simply on “purchasing capacity” – in a literal sense – of each Party (the leader of a compromising Communist Party has already forecast, that some “orange” deputies will soon come over to the side of the Party of Regions, and it is quite possible). It’s possible also a formation of “the big coalition” between Party of Regions and Block of Jushchenko. However all this is very and very fragile. For certain it is possible to tell only one – a political stability in Ukraine should not be expected in the near future.

Sergey Skvortsov,

The first secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU