Turning the pages back... December 28, 1997 (12/23/01)

Turning the pages back...

December 28, 1997

Writing four years ago, The Ukrainian Weekly reported that Ukraine's 1998 elections to the Verkhovna Rada would feature a very crowded field of political parties, with so many centrist parties registered that a fragmentation of the vote was inevitable.

Thirty political parties and blocs met the December 18, 1997, registration deadline for the March 29, 1998, elections by presenting petitions of 200,000 voters, with at least 10,000 signatures from each of 14 regions of Ukraine, to the Central Election Commission.

Among the 30 were more than 20 parties considered democratically inclined, from the right-leaning National Front bloc to the Social Democrats on the other side of center. However, they failed to form any substantial political blocs, which left the center fragmented against a tightly organized group of Communists and Socialists. Many political pundits and politicians said at the time that voters would scatter their votes, leaving few of the centrist parties able to reach the 4 percent threshold of the vote required in the new mixed system election law to seat candidates in the next Parliament.

Vyacheslav Chornovil, head of the Rukh Party, said the 30 political choices would "pull the vote apart." He said he believed that most of the registered parties were not true parties but merely groups organized to protect political and individual interests. "Thirty parties is a fiction," said Mr. Chornovil. "There is no such thing as a Liberal Democratic Party or a Christian Democratic Party. There are three parties or political interests: the Communists, Rukh and the party of power, or the nomenklatura. The rest is political clutter."

The Hromada Party, under the guidance of its leader, Pavlo Lazarenko, considered a master organizer, was the first to register its petitions with the CEC. On December 1, 1997, its representatives submitted signatures of 360,000 voters. Rukh and the Communist Party came second, both submitting their documents on December 8, 1997. Rukh delivered 560,000 voters' signatures, while the Communists presented more than 620,000.

Other major political parties and the number of signatures they had gathered on the eve of the 1998 elections were as follows: the Peasant and Socialist parties political bloc - 980,000; National Democratic Party - 350,000; the National Front - 400,000; the SLOn (Social-Liberal Union) political bloc - 475,000; the Together (Razom) political bloc of the Labor Party and the Liberal Party; the Christian Democratic Party - 500,000; Ukrainian National Assembly - 230,000.

Source: "Thirty parties are registered for '98 elections" by Roman Woronowycz, Kyiv Press Bureau, The Ukrainian Weekly, December 28, 1997, Vol. LXV, No 52.

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