UKRAINE MOVES TO AN EARLY ELECTION By Wilfred Szczesny Ukraine is heading for elections on October 26, 2014, years ahead of the normal 2017. On that day, proclaimed by President Petro Poroshenko, Ukrainians will elect new deputies to the Verkhovna rada (that is, members of parliament to the Supreme Council). Why the rush? At the end of May 2014, following the ouster of President Yanukovich, Petro Poroshenko was elected President of Ukraine. Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Barack Obamas and Angela Merkels our boy, became Prime Minister with the support of a coalition of right‑wing parties. With a very few exceptions, the deputies elected in 2010, including those of the Communist Party of Ukraine and the Party of Regions, remained in place. The Communist Party of Ukraine came under immediate attack, as did the Party of Regions, with increasing tension in eastern Ukraine. There were repeated demands that the deputies from these parties be expelled from their parliamentary seats and that the CPU be banned. However, the right wing in parliament was unable to gain enough support to enact these demands. The solution, as President Poroshenko and his advisers saw it, was to change the composition of the Supreme Council. On July 24, in collusion with the President of Ukraine, two parties (UDAR and Svoboda) withdrew from the governing coalition. Unable to pass two vital pieces of legislation (one to fund the government forces in eastern Ukraine, the other to impose austerity measures demanded by international moneylenders), Prime Minister Yatsenyuk and his entire Cabinet resigned. A week later, the Supreme Council met to consider the resignations. The resignations were rejected, with 125 members of a 450‑seat parliament voting. (The rest abstained or were absent.) The two pieces of legislation were passed. The Prime Minister was left in place, but lacking a majority in parliament. Under the Ukrainian constitution, parliamentarians had 30 days to cobble together a majority bloc. After that, the president was able to call an election. In the meantime, the chairman of the Supreme Council (somewhat akin to a speaker of the House of Commons in Canada) serves as acting prime minister. Immediate mission accomplished - on August 25, the October election was announced, and at the earliest opportunity October 26 was announced as the day. Will the longer term mission (the elimination of the CPU and the PR from parliament) be accomplished? Probably, at least in large measure. Ukraine has a system of mixed proportional representation. There is a 5% threshold for representation in the 225 seats elected on party lists. The other 225 seats are filled by a first‑past‑the‑post system. The Democratic Initiative Foundation estimates that as many as half of CPU and PR supporters in the 2012 election would not participate in the 2014 election. With the Crimea out of the picture, as well as much of eastern Ukraine, the CPU may be shut out, and possibly the PR as well. That would open the door for banning either party, or both. The result could be even more determined opposition, particularly in the east, to the highhandedness in Kyiv. (The above article is from the October 1-15, 2014, issue of Peoples Voice, Canadas leading socialist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to Peoples Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 23:29:20 +0000
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