Despite the broken promises of the Orange Revolution, rampant corruption and the ever-shifting allegiances that have marked Ukrainian politics in recent years, Ukrainian voters appear resilient and ready to vote in today’s parliamentary elections.
The election, in which the ruling Party of Regions will seek to maintain its parliamentary majority amid plummeting support in recent months, represents the first test at the polls for President Viktor Yanukovych and his party.
Yanukovych has come under criticism both at home and abroad for his jailing of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, his chief rival, for seven years for negotiating an allegedly unfavorable gas contract with Russia in 2009.
Critics, particularly the West and human rights activists, have also slammed what they call his undemocratic consolidation of power, placing family members at top government spots, limiting media freedom and pushing through legislation that allegedly hands the Party of Regions an unfair advantage at the polls.
But this, even after the breakdown and subsequent political infighting among the democratic forces that came to power after the 2004 Orange Revolution, has not deterred Ukrainians from voting.
“What’s the other option – not to vote at all?” asked Maxim Stremtsov, a 23-year-old salesman in Kiev.
According to a recent poll by the Razumkov Center in Kiev, about 75 percent of Ukrainians plan to vote today. That, experts said, is a considerable number, given Ukrainians’ lack of faith in their politicians and the electoral system.
According to a recent poll by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, only nine percent of Ukrainians believe the vote will be fair, while 70 percent said they will not protest if the authorities rig the election.
But this forms part of what experts say is a trend: Ukrainians, although highly distrustful of their politicians, still cast their votes out of general interest in participating in the political process.
“People are disillusioned with their politicians, but they are not disillusioned with politics,” said Serhiy Taran, director of the Kiev-based International Democracy Institute.
Uncertain Opposition
Ukraine’s opposition forces are hoping to capitalize on the recent downturn in support for the Party of Regions, which opinion polls suggest is expected to secure only about 23 percent of the vote.
World-famous boxer Vitaly Klitschko’s Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform (UDAR) has recently shot up in the polls. It has jockeyed with the United Opposition coalition, anchored by Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna party, for second place with projected support for each at about 17 percent.
The boxer, long a household name in Ukraine, has campaigned on a platform of European integration and anti-corruption.
But the opposition forces face a tough road ahead. While their ratings have risen dramatically in recent months, not all their supporters are confident that they can break Yanukovych’s and the Party of Regions’ hold on power.
“I feel bad for Yulia, but I’m very disenchanted with all of our political parties,” said pensioner Lesia Yushkina, who plans to vote for the United Opposition because of what she called the lack of anything better.
“The amount of dirt our politicians have thrown at one another is awful,” she added.
Analysts said that while public demand for an anti-Yanukovych opposition has increased, enthusiasm for opposition parties, such as Tymoshenko’s Batvikshchyna, remains very low.
Mykola Riabchuk, a senior researcher at the Ukrainian Center for Cultural Studies in Kiev, chalks this up to the failure of the “Orange-era democrats,” such as Tymoshenko and her ally and former Foreign Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, to establish a meaningful opposition force to Yanukovych until only recently.
“People perceive them as almost the same as the Party of Regions,” he said. “Maybe not as bad, but almost as bad.”
Reluctant Voters
But despite this public discontent with Yanukovych and the other leading politicians, the majority of Ukrainians have said they are prepared to vote regardless.
Mikhail Troitsky, a 56-year-old mechanic, said he will reluctantly vote for the Party of Regions to keep the notoriously fractious opposition at bay.
“At least they [the Party of Regions] have tried to do something,” he said. “The others are only trying to destroy everything.”
He added, however, that his expectations remain low: “It’s just another battle for political power that won’t produce any real changes.”
While other voters in the Ukrainian capital expressed similar disenchantment, they also saw real value – however minimal – in going to the polls.
“I don’t trust any of the leaders or the parties,” said 18-year-old student Nikita, who declined to provide his last name. “But on the other hand, what happens if I don’t vote? Someone else will steal my voice.”
This sense of electoral duty, Taran said, is in part a result of the constant presence of politics in Ukrainians’ every-day lives. He pointed, for instance, to the popularity of political talk shows, which make up a large chunk of primetime broadcasting on Ukrainian television.
“People in Ukraine are very-well informed about their politics,” he said.
Still Taking Action
Ukrainians’ dedication to participating in the democratic process, experts say, signals their resilience, despite what some view as a rollback on democracy in the country following the Orange Revolution.
Then, between 500,000 and one million people took to the streets and gathered in Kiev’s Independence Square – mobilized by sheer outrage at what they believed to be Yanukovych’s falsified victory.
This phenomenon was hailed by the West as a milestone in the post-Soviet state’s democratic development.
But relations between its principal players – former Prime Minister Tymoshenko and former President Yushchenko – soon deteriorated into bitter political infighting and stalled reforms.
Yet this momentous change also marked the beginning of a trend of political participation in Ukraine that has remained relatively steady for several years, according to Volodymyr Fesenko, an analyst at the Penta Center think-tank in Kiev.
He added that campaign season has “heated up” people’s interest in voting: and the signs of election season across Kiev are many and varied.
Pensioners carry plastic bags adorned with the political parties’ logos, and passersby stop at a makeshift Tymoshenko support camp in downtown Kreshchatyk, and laugh at its crudely drawn caricatures of Yanukovych as a fire-breathing demon.
Stremtsov, who plans to vote for Klitschko’s UDAR, said he wanted to “try something new” by voting for an opposition candidate. “We’ve already seen what Yuschenko’s ‘Orange’ government and Yanukovych were about, and I didn’t see anything special,” he said.
