Fifteen years ago, on April 5, 2004, President Leonid Kuchma signed into law a series of bills on presidential elections that had been overwhelmingly passed by the Verkhovna Rada in March. The bills reduced the presidential campaign period from 180 to 120 days and lowered the threshold for registering a candidate from 1 million to 500,000 signatures.
Mr. Kuchma also signed a bill that endorsed a memorandum of understanding between Ukraine and NATO regarding Ukraine’s support for NATO operations. The memorandum granted NATO troops the right to quick access to Ukrainian territory if such a move was warranted by the implementation of the alliance’s general policies. Previously, Ukraine had maintained a non-aligned status in its relationship with NATO.
Earlier that week, on April 2, 2004, Interfax reported that Mr. Kuchma signed a bill on a fully proportional parliamentary-election system in Ukraine.
Although initially opposed by Mr. Kuchma, the move to adopt a proportional parliamentary system showed the political transformation Ukraine was experiencing in stark contrast to the voting tradition that was inherited from the Soviet system of one-party Communism.
In the days following, Mr. Kuchma urged additional constitutional reforms aimed at a “radical dismantling of the nomenklatura [and] administrative-and-command-system regime” in Ukraine. The proposed reforms, Mr. Kuchma said, would strengthen the economy and separate “the authorities and business as much as possible.” He called opposition to the reforms, led by Viktor Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, “horrifyingly irrational and irresponsible.”
The opposition leaders said they would lead demonstrations in Kyiv to protest the measures. “The essence of these constitutional amendments is directed not toward forming a European model of democracy but toward passing some powers of the next president to the parliamentary majority,” Our Ukraine’s Yurii Kostenko said. “We are trying to respond,” added Ms. Tymoshenko. “We will use all possible levers of influence [to prevent the passage of the bill.]”
Mr. Yushchenko and Ms. Tymoshenko would later win elections as president and prime minister, respectively. The two leaders were major figures during the Orange Revolution that overturned the rigged election results by which showed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych had won the presidency.
The Verkhovna Rada on April 6, 2004, passed a bill on local elections that prescribed a majority system for rural councils and a proportional party-list system for all other councils in Ukrainian local elections. The bill stipulated that deputies to rural councils were to be elected by majority system. Councilors of all other, high-tier bodies of self-government, including the Parliament of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, would be elected under a full proportional, party-list system with a 3 percent threshold for representation. Opposition leaders failed in three attempts to vote the bill down.
Sources: “Kuchma signs bills on elections, NATO,” “Kuchma signs proportional elections bill” and “President pushes for constitutional reform,” RFE/RL, The Ukrainian Weekly, April 11, 2004.