On 26 October, Ukraine held parliamentary elections. The elections were not held in contested parts of the country, however, and rival polls were held on 2 November in Donetsk and Luhansk. Max Bader writes that while the composition of the new Ukrainian parliament is now more pro-European than ever, the on-going conflict in eastern regions ensures the country’s future will remain deeply uncertain

Bader, Max

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05/11/2014Ukraine’s elections have made it clear voters want to movein a pro-European direction, but the country’s futureremains anything but certainblogs.lse.ac.uk /europpblog/2014/11/05/ukraines-elections-make-it-clear-voters-want-to-move-in-a-pro-european-direction-but-the-countrys-future-remains-anything-but-certain/On 26 October, Ukraine held parliamentary elections. The elections were not held in contested parts of thecountry, however, and rival polls were held on 2 November in Donetsk and Luhansk. Max Baderwrites that while the composition of the new Ukrainian parliament is now more pro-European thanever, the on-going conflict in eastern regions ensures the country’s future will remain deeplyuncertain.After the Euromaidan revolution in February of this year, there were immediate calls to hold newparliamentary elections, in addition to a presidential election, in order to replace the legislature thathad been elected in 2012. The 2012 legislature had become especially discredited because, at theheight of the revolution, it voted in favour of a package of reforms which, if implemented, had the potential to turnUkraine into an outright dictatorship. Because a number of MPs changed political allegiances, the ‘old’ legislaturehas been able to adopt a number of important laws since the revolution, including on European integration, the Anti-Terrorist Operation in the East, the lustration of discredited officials, and anti-corruption policies.After two political parties withdrew their support for the ruling coalition in July, newly elected president Poroshenkowas finally able to call a new election. The 26 October election was held under a parallel mixed electoral system,according to which 225 MPs were elected from closed nation-wide party lists, and the remaining 225 in single-member districts. Of the six parties elected to the new parliament through the proportional section of the ballot, fiveare, at least in their declarations, squarely in favour of comprehensive reform and of European integration.The Opposition Bloc, which came in fourth with 9 per cent of the vote, is the only party that represents forces fromthe Yanukovych regime and that advocates reconciliation with Russia. Four of the five pro-European parties, as wellas the Opposition Bloc, are new political formations. Only the Fatherland party of former prime minister YuliaTymoshenko, which narrowly crossed the five per cent threshold, has competed in previous elections. The newcomposition of Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, altogether contains many old faces, but also manynewcomers to the political scene, including prominent journalists and Euromaidan activists. The Table below showsthe full results.Table: Results of the 2014 parliamentary election in Ukraine1/3Note: Half of the 450 members of parliament are elected using proportional representation onnation-wide lists, while the other half are elected in single-member constituencies. The Tableshows the vote share in the national vote – where parties had to pass a 5 per cent thresholdto be allocated seats. The Table also shows the total seats for each party from the nationaland constituency elections for seats which have been declared, however many of thoseelected from constituencies will later join party factions (i.e. some of the independentsshown in the Table). Results are based on the Central Election Commission’s latest figures –the 27 seats within contested parts of the country will be left vacant. Figures are rounded toone decimal place. For more information on the parties see: Petro Poroshenko Bloc, People’sFront, Self Reliance Party, Opposition Bloc, Radical Party, All-Ukrainian Union “Fatherland”,Svoboda (Freedom), Communist Party, Strong Ukraine, Civil Position, Zastup, Right Sector,Volia.The election results suggest a remarkable shift in Ukraine’s political landscape. For the first time, pro-Europeanforces are unequivocally dominant. The two biggest parties are those of president Poroshenko (Petro PoroshenkoBloc) and of prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk ( People’s Front). These two parties will control slightly more than halfof seats in the Verkhovna Rada, and are poised to form a coalition, whether or not with other parties added.A look at the electoral map shows that the Opposition Bloc has still been able to win the proportional section of thevote in a number of regions in the East. While previously, however, Yanukovych’s Party of Regions managed to winan overwhelming majority in these regions, the five pro-European parties together now received more votes thanthe Opposition Bloc.The explicitly nationalist parties fared poorly in the election despite the powerful patriotic sentiments that have beenevoked by the Russian annexation of Crimea and the Russian-backed separatist struggle in the East. The Svoboda(Freedom) party, which won ten per cent of the proportional vote in the 2012 elections, failed to cross the thresholdby a small margin this time around. And the Right Sector party, whose activists were among some of the mosthardline Euromaidan protestors, and which is considered by some as proto-fascist, ended in twelfth position, withless than two per cent of the vote.In previous elections, there was a clear electoral divide between several regions in the western and central areas of2/3the country on the one hand, and several regions in the eastern and southern parts of the country on the other hand(with some regions in between). Both in this parliamentary election and in the May 2014 presidential election, inwhich Poroshenko won a plurality of the vote in almost every district of the country, the electoral divide has beenmuch less sharp. Another positive aspect about the election is that it was exceptionally well assessed by theOrganization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the foremost organisation that monitored theelection. Among the roughly 4,000 polling stations across the country where voting procedures were observed, onlyone per cent were considered flawed by observers.The elections, however, were also problematic in several respects. First, and most obviously, voting was notconducted in areas that are within the legal borders of Ukraine, but that are currently not controlled by the centralauthorities, in particular Crimea, and some of the most populated parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The 27seats assigned to the single-member districts of these areas will remain vacant.Second, turnout in the election, at 52 per cent, is surprisingly low at first glance. One likely reason for this is that thecampaign was short and relatively timid. Political parties and candidates were generally hesitant to stage bigcampaigns while the conflict in the separatist-held areas rages on. A second reason for the low turnout is that thepro-European parties which now dominate the legislature were highly similar in their programmatic messages. Theparties, some of which were created only over the summer, were in fact associated first and foremost with theirleaders, rather than with programmatic positions. A final reason for the low turnout is that, taken together, theoutcome of the election was predetermined: while the 2012 election was heavily contested between forces that wereloyal and opposed, respectively, to the Yanukovych administration, it was clear from the beginning that the October26 election would be swept by forces that came to power following the revolution.Even more so than the revolution, the conflict in the East has brought Ukrainians closer together. This is evidenced,among other things, by the impressive scale of civil society activity to support the (largely volunteer) troops in theEast, and to keep a check on the new authorities. In a sense, the country now knows where it wants to go. Thequestion for the coming months and years is to what extent the Putin regime will seek to further disrupt the pro-European and pro-reform course that Ukrainians have voted for.Please read our comments policy before commenting .Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, norof the London School of Economics. Featured image: Ukraine flag, Credit: U.S. Army Europe Images (CC-BY-SA-3.0)Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/1qo1nn0 _________________________________About the authorMax Bader – Leiden UniversityMax Bader is Assistant Professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies at Leiden University. He servedas a short-term observer during the 2014 parliamentary elections in Ukraine on 26 October.3/3

Ukraine’s elections have made it clear voters want to move in a pro-European direction, but the country’s future remains anything but certain

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