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A Difficult Road Ahead The 2014 Ukrainian Parliamentary Election
Ukrainians will head to the polls on October 26 for the first parliamentary election held since the Maidan Revolution. The Verkhovna Rada’s efforts to implement reforms aimed at tackling corruption have been stymied by “old guard” legislators elected during the Yanukovych regime. A new government will face several daunting challenges including saving Ukraine’s failing economy, instituting structural reforms and finding a permanent solution to the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Yanukovych and his party had abused government resources and dominated media coverage in the pursuit of victory. Since that election, Ukraine’s political calculus has fundamentally changed. Yanukovych’s decision, taken just before the EU’s Eastern Partnership summit last November, to shelve a long-negotiated political and economic pact with Brussels, known as an association agreement, in favor of closer ties with Russia touched off a political and social firestorm. Massive protests throughout Ukraine precipitated a series of events leading to Yanukovych’s departure from office (and the country) in
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The parties of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and President Petro Poroshenko will compete in the October 26 parliamentary elections.
Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, has had a turbulent two years. In October 2012, then-President Viktor Yanukovych and his political party, the pro-Kremlin Party of Regions, claimed victory in a parliamentary election marred with controversy. The Party of Regions ostensibly secured more votes than the pro-European Fatherland party and its detained leader, Yulia Tymoshenko, whose imprisonment by the Yanukovych government on charges of corruption and abuse of power was seen by many as politically motivated. But international election observers decried the election as a step back from democracy, claiming that
February 2014 and the subsequent dissolution of the Party of Regions as a parliamentary force. In its place, a new pro-Western government hastily emerged, comprised of a diverse coalition of opposition parties including the Fatherland party of newly released Tymoshenko, the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform (UDAR) led by former boxer and current Kyiv Mayor Vitali Kiltschko, and the far-right nationalist Freedom party. With the pro-Western billionaire and new President Petro Poroshenko, elected on May 25, the new government, led by Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk (Fatherland), pledged to undertake an ambitious agenda aimed at tackling corruption, strengthening democracy and permanently orienting Ukraine towards the West. The government successfully secured loans totaling $34 billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the United States and the EU to rescue Ukraine’s failing economy and undertake painful but necessary structural reforms. In a direct rebuttal to Yanukovych, Poroshenko signed in June the association agreement with the EU that had precipitated the crisis eight months earlier. The Verkhovna Rada ratified the pact in September.
Further progress towards reforming Ukrainian politics, however, has been problematic since the Verkhovna Rada has struggled to pass major reform bills. Despite its pro-Western shift, the parliament still contains several “old guard” legislators, holdovers from the 2012 parliamentary elections as well as current and former Party of Regions members who have obstructed attempts to implement speedy and comprehensive anti-corruption reform. This led to the collapse of the ruling coalition in July, when UDAR and Freedom withdrew from the government, prompting Yatsenyuk to offer his resignation. As a result, on August 25, President Poroshenko officially dissolved parliament and called for a snap election on October 26. Poroshenko and other proponents of the vote have argued that the ballot will provide an opportunity to strengthen the parliament. With the current legislative term set to end in 2017, the early election could indeed clear out many Yanukovych-era politicians and produce a legislature that reflects the current political climate. The election, however, also presents major challenges to reform efforts. The most significant challenge is the potential for political infighting among Ukraine’s pro-
European politicians. While heavyweights such as Tymoshenko, Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk have largely cooperated on pushing major reforms, they are nonetheless competing in the election for seats and influence. Poroshenko’s base of support, the eponymously named Petro Poroshenko Bloc, announced it would ally with Klitschko’s UDAR, and public polling suggests that the bloc will win big in the new parliament. Political infighting has already led Yatsenyuk to leave Fatherland and organize a new political grouping, the Popular Front, with Verkhovna Rada Chairman Oleksandr Turchynov. After negotiations to campaign with the Poroshenko Bloc broke down, the Popular Front will compete in the election independently, with Yatsenyuk at the head of the party list. This leaves Tymoshenko, who lost to Poroshenko in May’s presidential election, to compete as head of Fatherland. Tymoshenko has at times been fiercely critical of Poroshenko, most recently referring to the president’s decision to delay implementation of a freetrade deal with the EU as a “betrayal of national interests”.
The Road Ahead
Concurrent to finding a solution to the conflict in eastern Ukraine will be overcoming seemingly insurmountable
differences with Russia. Kyiv asserts that the Kremlin has provided materiel and financial support to separatists in the east, and has been at loggerheads with Moscow over late payments to Russian state-owned gas giant Gazprom. On June 16, Gazprom shut off the flow of gas to Ukraine, arguing that Kyiv owes the company $5.3 billion. Poroshenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin were able to broker a preliminary agreement to supply Ukraine with gas through the end of March. However, both sides remain far apart on achieving a permanent deal on the supply of gas or on Ukraine’s substantial gas debt. Failure to find a permanent solution to the gas dispute as well as the fighting in eastern Ukraine, a region which accounts for nearly 16 percent of the country’s GDP, could ultimately prove disastrous for the country’s economy, which the World Bank estimates will shrink by eight percent in 2014. The Ukrainian currency, the hryvnia,
has already plummeted nearly 40 percent against the dollar this year. The IMF has warned that Ukraine could require as much as $19 billion in additional funding should the conflict continue and the gas dispute with Moscow go unresolved. With so much riding on it, the parliamentary election will provide a key test for pro-European politicians’ ability to advance Ukraine’s democratic and structural reforms. The country has seen significant progress since the controversial election of 2012, but the actions of the next parliament may ultimately determine Ukraine’s political, economic and territorial future.
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Whichever governing coalition ultimately emerges from the October 26 election will face a daunting agenda. It will have to help broker a permanent solution to the ongoing conflict with pro-Russian separatists in the eastern oblasts (districts) of Luhansk and Donetsk that has left thousands dead and severely hindered the implementation of broad structural reforms. Despite a brittle ceasefire deal, a lasting solution to the conflict remains elusive and the future status of thousands of Ukrainian citizens within those territories, who will largely be prevented from taking part in the October election, remains unclear. In addition, separatists groups continue to push for a permanent break from Kyiv, dismissing Poroshenko’s offers of decentralization and broader autonomy under a new constitution.
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The Verkhovna Rada Electoral System
Ukraine will conduct the October 26 parliamentary election under a mixed electoral system, the same that governed the last elections in 2012. Under this system, the Verkhovna Rada’s 450 seats are divided into two equally large groups:
half (225) of the members of parliament will be chosen in a first-past-the-post system; the other half will be selected nationwide in a proportional party-list system with a five-percent threshold. Voters will have two ballots: one to select their local representative, the other to select a political party. The use of this system follows recently failed efforts by the Verkhovna Rada to pass legislation returning elections to the 2006 model, in which all seats were elected using the proportional party-list system.
The failure to reform the electoral system raises key issues heading into the election. Fighting in the eastern districts of Luhansk and Donetsk increases uncertainty about the region’s ability to elect local representatives while seats allocated to Crimea are unlikely to be filled. Former members of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions will also be participating in the election under different party labels or as independents.
Who’s who in Ukraine’s Parliamentary Elections Petro Poroshenko Petro Poroshenko is the fifth president of Ukraine, having been elected on May 25, 2014, following Yanukovych’s flight from office. Known as the “Chocolate King” for his ownership of a confectionary business, Poroshenko is staunchly pro-European and pro-Western. He backed the 2004 Orange Revolution and served as Tymoshenko’s foreign minister from 2009 to 2010. As president, Poroshenko has pushed for resolving the conflict with Russia while pursuing economic and political liberalization. He said his decision to hold early parliamentary elections “was one of the main demands of the revolution of dignity” and “a key part of his peace plan”. "I consider victory in [eastern Ukraine] and the victory of democratic reforming forces in parliament a mutually linked process," he added.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk Arseniy Yatsenyuk has been Ukraine’s prime minister since the departure of the Yanukovych regime in February. Yatsenyuk has described his time in government as a “kamikaze mission” as he and his cabinet have been forced to make politically difficult decisions in an effort to institute necessary political and economic reform. Yatsenyuk abruptly tendered his resigned in July after the collapse of the ruling coalition. However, the parliament overwhelmingly rejected his resignation following a vote of confidence. Yatsenyuk, with Verkhovna Rada Chairman Oleksandr Turchynov, will compete in the parliamentary election under the banner of a new party, the Popular Front, following their departure from Yulia Tymoshenko’s Fatherland party.
Yulia Tymoshenko
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Former Prime Minister and Orange Revolution leader Yulia Tymoshenko was controversially imprisoned for embezzlement and abuse of power after losing the 2010 presidential election to Viktor Yanukovych. Her release, an EU prerequisite for an association agreement with Ukraine, came in the last days of the Maidan Revolution. Tymoshenko has been the head of the Fatherland party since its creation in 1999 and will lead it in the upcoming parliamentary election. She is pro-European and pro-NATO membership, stating that “there can’t be a single day of applying the brakes on [Ukraine’s] path to Europe.” She has strongly criticized Poroshenko’s agreement to delay implementation of the EU association agreement as "a betrayal of national interests”.
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Oleh Lyashko Oleh Lyashko heads the Radical Party and is its sole representative in Ukraine’s parliament. Lyashko was elected leader of the party after leaving Tymoshenko’s Fatherland in 2011. He is a self-described “anti-oligarchic” candidate and a controversial figure in contemporary Ukrainian politics. He advocates a nationalist pro-European policy that emphasizes efforts to neutralize the country’s “internal enemies”, which include separatists and corrupt government officials. Lyashko’s popularity has grown with all the political upheaval. He has taken credit for establishing volunteer militias fighting in eastern Ukraine and routinely publicizes his participation in the arrests of pro-Russian separatists. Despite Lyashko’s controversial views, the Radical Party is expected to come in second in the parliamentary election.
Vitali Klitschko Vitali Klitschko has been mayor of Kyiv since May 25, 2014 and is leader of UDAR. A former boxer, he was a prominent figure of the Maidan Revolution. Klitschko is pro-European and favors compromising with Russia to end the fighting. Having allied with the Poroshenko Bloc, UDAR is not campaigning independently in the parliamentary election.
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