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The Parliamentary Elections in Ukraine, October 2014

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The Parliamentary Elections in Ukraine, October 2014 Notes on recent elections / Electoral Studies 39 (2015) 153e177 159 The parliamentary elections in Ukraine, October 2014 Oxana Shevel Tufts University, Department of Political Science, Packard Hall, Medford, MA 02155, USA article info Article history: Received 21 December 2014 Received in revised form 25 March 2015 Accepted 25 March 2015 Available online 3 April 2015 The Ukrainian parliamentary elections of 26 October in the first round; his closest competitor, Yulia Tymosh- 2014, according to international monitoring groups, enko, received 12.8%. “marked an important step in Ukraine's aspirations to The Ukrainian parliament (known as Verkhovna Rada) consolidate democratic elections in line with its interna- had been elected on 28 October 2012 for a five-year term. tional commitments.” (OSCE/ODHIR, 2014). The elections However, the fall of Yanukovych put the issue of early also produced results that can be considered ground- parliamentary elections on the agenda. In the parliament breaking in comparison with the outcomes of all previous elected in 2012, Yanukovych's Party of Regions held the elections in the post-Soviet period. These results have the most seats. Together with the Communist Party, the Lytvyn potential to set the Ukrainian political process more firmly block, and some unaffiliated deputies, it formed the gov- on the pro-European trajectory than at any point prior erning coalition. In the days after the victory of the Euro- since independence. This note examines the results of the maidan protests, the Party of Regions saw massive 2014 elections, identifies what can be considered its defections from its ranks and the pro-Yanukovych majority particularly consequential outcomes, and analyzes reasons collapsed in the Rada. On 27 February 2014, a newly- for these outcomes and their possible impact on Ukraine's formed majority coalition of the former opposition parties political future. and some defectors from the Party of Regions formed new governing coalition. Societal demand for parliamentary renewal e in March 2014, for example, 65.8% of those surveyed supported early legislative elections (SOCIS, 2014) 1. Background e led the newly elected President Poroshenko to pledge his support for early elections. The anti-Yanukovych parties On 26 October 2014, Ukrainian citizens voted in early also supported early elections; they were able to create a parliamentary elections. The elections can be considered an constitutional justification for new elections by dissolving end-point to the period of rapid and dramatic political the majority coalition in the legislature. On 24 July, two changes Ukraine experienced over the past year. In parties that were members of the post-Yanukovych gov- November 2013, street protests erupted in Ukraine after erning coalition, Udar and Svoboda, and dozens of indi- then president Viktor Yanukovych decided to postpone vidual coalition members, announced their withdrawal signing the Association and free trade agreement with the from the coalition. According to the Ukrainian Constitution, European Union on the eve of the event. The street protests if a new coalition is not formed within 30 days of the pre- that became known as Euromaidan lasted for three months vious one's dissolution, the president can dissolve parlia- and culminated, during February 2014, in bloody confron- ment, resulting in early legislative elections. On 25 August, tations between protesters and police, the shooting deaths a month after the coalition liquidated itself, President of dozens of protesters by government snipers, the flight of Poroshenko signed a decree dissolving parliament, and Yanukovych to Russia, the annexation of Crimean peninsula called early parliamentary elections for 26 October 2014. by Russia, and the outbreak of separatist conflict in the eastern region of Donbas. Yanukovych's departure led to pre-term presidential elections in Ukraine on 25 May 2014. 2. Electoral system In this contest, Petro Poroshenko, a business tycoon and a ranking member of the Ukrainian political establishment The 2014 elections were conducted under the same since the late 1990s, was elected the fifth president of system as the 2012 elections: a mixed system, with 50% of Ukraine on a platform of Euro-Atlantic integration, anti- the 450 legislative seats filled by proportional representa- corruption and market reforms, and defense of Ukrainian tion (based on a party list vote with a 5% threshold) and 50% territorial integrity. Poroshenko received 54.7% of the votes of the seats filled by single-member-district races. Prior to the 2014 elections, there were unsuccessful attempts to amend the electoral law and to return to the fully propor- E-mail address: [email protected]. tional closed list representation system that operated in 160 Notes on recent elections / Electoral Studies 39 (2015) 153e177 Table 1 Results of the parliamentary election in Ukraine, October 2014. Party Party list SMD seats Total seats won Votes Votes % Seats Popular Front 3,488,114 22.1 64 18 82 Petro Poroshenko's Block 3,437,521 21.8 63 69 132 Self-Reliance 1,729,271 11.0 32 1 33 Opposition Block 1,486,203 9.4 27 2 29 Radical Party of Oleh Liashko 1,173,131 7.4 22 0 22 Fatherland 894,837 5.7 17 2 19 Svoboda 742,022 4.7 0 6 6 Communist Party 611,923 3.9 0 0 0 Strong Ukraine 491,471 3.1 0 1 1 Civic Position 489,523 3.1 0 0 0 Zastup 418,301 2.7 0 1 1 Right Sector 284,943 1.8 0 1 1 Volia n/a 1 1 Independents n/a 96 96 Total seats 225 198 423 Note: n/a indicates parties that did not participate in the proportional component. Source: Central Electoral Commission of Ukraine (http://www.cvk.gov.ua/). Ukraine from 2006 to 2007, or to institute open list pro- As Table 1 shows, on the party list vote, six parties cleared portionate representation. With the implosion of the Party the 5% threshold and gained legislative representation. Of of Regions, former associates of Yanukovych saw better these six, five formed the ruling coalition on November 27: chances for securing seats in single member districts than Petro Poroshenko's Block, a pro-presidential party bearing on the party list, and several proposals to amend the the president's name; Popular Front, headed by Prime electoral law failed in the parliament before the October Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk; Self-Reliance, the party of the elections (BBC Ukraina, 2013). popular mayor of the western city of Lviv that united some The fact that elections were not conducted in several prominent anti-corruption and reform activists from the electoral districts was another important feature of the NGO sector; the Radical Party, headed by populist politician 2014 vote. As a result of the Russian annexation of Crimea Oleh Liashko; and Fatherland, the party of the Yulia and the ongoing armed conflict between the Ukrainian Tymoshenko, the former prime minister who was jailed on forces and Russia-backed separatists in the eastern Donbas politically motivated charges under Yanukovych and freed region, elections did not take place in territories outside of after his downfall. All parties that formed the coalition the control of the central government: all 12 electoral dis- campaigned on a platform of closer ties with the West, anti- tricts of Crimea, nine out of 21 electoral districts in Donetsk corruption and market reforms, and opposition to the oblast, and six out of 11 districts in Luhansk oblast did not Russian actions in Crimea and Donbas. The five parties won a conduct elections (Ukrains'ka pravda, 2014b). 27 of the 225 total of 288 seats, but the coalition formed on November 27 single member seats were therefore not contested in the consisted of 302 legislators, a constitutional majority. This October elections and will remain unfilled. total was reached after a number of candidates who ran as independents joined the coalition (most of these joined the Poroshenko's Block caucus in the parliament).1 3. Contenders and results Opposition Block faction, composed of the elites formerly associated with the Yanukovych's Party of Re- As scholars of Ukrainian electoral politics have gions, was left outside the coalition, as were two parlia- observed, during the post-Soviet period the Ukrainian mentary groups, People's Will and Economic Development, party system was divided along two main cleavages: a that were formed after the parliament convened and that socio-economic, left-right cleavage, reflecting divergent were composed of parliamentarians who ran as nominally preferences for state intervention in the economy, and a independent but who are for the most part earlier defectors national identity cleavage, reflecting divergent preferences from the Party of Regions (The Party of Regions itself, which in issues such as language policies, interpretations of his- won the last parliamentary elections in 2012, did not reg- tory, and foreign policy orientation between Russia and the ister a party list for these elections.). Together, as of 8 West (Herron, 2014). In previous elections, there was a very December 2014, the Opposition Block, People's Will, and close balance between parties representing opposing po- Economic Development numbered 40, 20, and 18 mem- sitions on these two cleavages. Elections produced close bers, respectively. There were also 39 independent dep- results with only slim majorities in either direction. The uties who did not join any of the parliamentary groupings 2014 elections stand out from this pattern. For the first time (Verkhovna Rada Ukrainy, 2014). in the post-Soviet period, parties representing the pro- Western and pro-market axis won an overwhelming vic- tory. Also for the first time in the post-Soviet period, the Communist Party failed to secure electoral representation. 1 Composition of parliamentary fractions is available at (Verkhovna Table 1 presents election results. Rada Ukrainy, 2014).
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