Will
“Our Ukraine-Peoples’ Self-Defence” Learn Lessons from Moroz?
By Orest Zakydalsky
The Ukrainian Parliamentary elections can be officially considered
over, as the courts recently threw out challenges of the election results by
several parties. The Central Electoral Commission has made public the official
results; international observers have almost universally agreed that the
elections were free and fair.
Perhaps the most important lesson that Ukrainian
politicians can take from the September 30 elections is that Ukrainian voters
are willing to forgive much – they are not, however, willing to forget or
forgive betrayal. Oleksandr Moroz’s Socialist Party of Ukraine will not be
present in the next parliament, having failed by 0.14% to pass the three
percent threshold. The SPU’s support in a little over a year fell by half - in
the March 2006 election they took 5.69% of the vote; in September 2007, 2.86%.
Inarguably, the reason for the SPU’s dramatic drop in the polls and their subsequent
death (at least as long as Oleksndr Moroz remains leader) as a national
political force was Moroz’s betrayal of the Orange Coalition to which he had
signed on in June 2006.
In 2006, the SPU campaigned on a promise to join
an Orange Coalition after the elections. During voting for Parliamentary
Speaker, Moroz dropped a bombshell – in exchange for his own election as
Speaker, and unsubstantiated rumors that $300 million was paid to the SPU, he
agreed to abandon the Orange Coalition to which he had signed on. Instead, he
formed a coalition with the Party of Regions and the Communist Party of Ukraine
– which named itself the Anti-Crisis Coalition (ACC). Moroz in effect traded
short-term political gain for his electorate and gambled (and lost) that the ACC
would be able to change the constitution and dramatically reduce the powers of
the President.
In the 2007 Election Campaign, the two “Orange”
forces – the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (BYuT) and Our Ukraine-Peoples’ Self Defence
bloc (NU-NS) campaigned fervently on the promise that if given a mandate to
form a ruling coalition, they would do so, and that the bloc which took the
most votes would have the right to nominate the Prime Minister (the bloc coming
second would have the right to nominate the Speaker, and inisterial portfolios
would be split 50-50). The two orange forces have received such a mandate from
the Ukrainian voter – together they control a slim majority of 228 of 450
parliamentary deputies.
Currently, negotiations on the formation of an
Orange Coalition are under way. There is a disturbing sense, however, of dj
vu all over again. In 2006, political manoeuvring and backroom
disagreements left the door open for Moroz’s abandonment of the Orange
Coalition. In recent days there have been announcements from several members of
NU-NS, most importantly former PM Yuri Yekhanurov, that there are portions of
NU-NS deputies that may not be willing to support the nomination of Yulia
Tymoshenko as Prime Minister. There has been much talk of forming a coalition
of “national unity” with NU-NS and the Party of Regions.
NU-NS leaders would do well to remember the
lesson of Oleksandr Moroz. If they do decide to abandon their BYuT allies,
NU-NS may very well suffer the same fate as Moroz’s SPU. Ukrainian voters will
not forgive an NU-NS betrayal. It is time for the Ukrainian political elite to
understand that promises made during election campaigns must be kept, and that
political leaders, in the end, are responsible to their electorate and not to
the business interests behind their parties.
BYuT and NU-NS have received a mandate from the
Ukrainian people to form a majority coalition and the government. It is time to
get on with it.