EDITORIAL: Ukraine's third parliamentary elections (04/07/02)

EDITORIAL

Ukraine's third parliamentary elections

The big news in Ukraine's third parliamentary elections was that former Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine bloc won more than 23.6 percent of the vote. The other big news was that this marked the first time a bloc other than the Communist Party had won a plurality of votes in a parliamentary election in Ukraine.

Any way you look at it, Our Ukraine, known in Ukrainian as Nasha Ukraina, was the winner. Besides winning in terms of the party vote, getting 6.06 million votes to the Communist Party's 5.15 million (20 percent), Our Ukraine also won 112 seats to For a United Ukraine's 106 and the Communists' 66 (these are the totals when the results of voting on by-party lists and single-mandate districts are added).

What makes Our Ukraine's showing even more significant is that it took place in circumstances that could hardly be called fair and equal. There was no level playing field in these parliamentary elections, as readers who have been following developments in Ukraine are well aware. The full power of those in power and their so-called "administrative resources" were brought into play to favor the favored - the For a United Ukraine bloc headed by Kuchma crony Volodymyr Lytvyn, who happens to be the president's chief of staff. It should be noted that Mr. Lytvyn was allowed to stay on in his post while other officials were required to takes leaves for the duration of the election campaign (the better to control the allocation of valuable resources, my dear).

The Committee of Ukrainian Voters, while reporting that "there was no reason to believe that the election results do not reflect the will of the citizens," also emphasized that the pressures exerted by government officials in order to influence voters' choices had greatly increased. There were reports of intimidation, blackmail, "black PR," disinformation such as reports that the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists had created an "Anti-American Front," and dirty politics like choosing a name for a bloc that is meant to deliberately confuse voters, or capitalize on someone else's good reputation.

RFE/RL Poland, Belarus and Ukraine Report quoted Mr. Yushchenko as saying in an interview with Ukrainska Pravda: "I haven't seen elections that were more cynical. ... Disinformation and cynicism are the main [barrier] separating us from democracy."

Despite all of the foregoing, Our Ukraine won big and its deputies will enter the next Verkhovna Rada as a powerful force. To be sure, there are other strong forces, and no one group alone has a majority (226 votes, or 50 percent plus one of the 450-member Rada), much less a constitutional majority (two-thirds of the 450 deputies' seats - the number of votes needed to approve a change in the Constitution).

What affiliations are established among parties and blocs, and with the 93 independent candidates who have won seats in the Parliament, remains to be seen. (Indeed, as this issue of The Weekly went to press, there already were some discrepancies in the number of seats reportedly held by parties/blocs due to the fact that some independents once elected declared their allegiances to various groups.) The true picture will emerge only once the new Verkhovna Rada convenes.

For now, though, we are heartened by the achievements of Our Ukraine and hope that the next Parliament of Ukraine will succeed in propelling Ukraine toward democracy, a free market economy and a Western orientation.

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