Parliamentary Elections — What Has Changed

So, the election results are already well known; according to preliminary data, the Party of Regions will take the majority, while the opposition remains in the minority. If we add the communists, who traditionally support regional initiatives, to the Regions, then, apparently, a constitutional majority may also be within reach on certain issues.

What Is New?

In the new parliament we will see, so to speak, official representatives of two “new” parties — UDAR, led by Vitali Klitschko, and Svoboda. Though calling them “new faces” somehow doesn’t sit right with the tongue. UDAR lacks any ideology of its own; rather, the ideas were assigned to it by the voters. Observers unanimously consider this party’s prospects highly questionable, and it is assumed that UDAR will quite likely become the main source of “tushkas” (apart from majoritarian deputies).

As for Svoboda, once again it represents nothing new; national socialism is an old, well-established ideology of ethnic hatred that has proven itself and, so to speak, stood the test of time. The advantage here is undoubtedly that Svoboda’s behavior is easily predictable, like bad weather in November. Though many claim that the Svoboda members are not national socialists at all — they are simply dabbling. They say that soon they will start stealing like everyone else and calm down¹. This is certainly encouraging, but even in this case it should be acknowledged that Svoboda has brought nothing new to the Rada.

How Does It Work?

To roughly imagine how everything will proceed, let us recall that political reform was cancelled here. This means there is no need for a permanent, formalized majority. The authors of any given bill need a situational majority for that specific bill; a situational majority is also required for approving appointments, and so on. However, the PR faction, which serves as a kind of transfer mechanism between political-economic groups and the state, will certainly form some faction. The “Donetsk people” like to march in formation; they need a clearly formalized organization, and their patrons need a guarantee that “coordinated” initiatives will be automatically voted through in the Rada.

The presence of majoritarian deputies, who, as is well known, are considerably easier to control than party-factional deputies, creates additional degrees of freedom for the executive branch. The PR faction may formally oppose some “unpopular” bills, which, however, will still pass thanks to a situationally organized majority of majoritarian deputies and individual “official” regional deputies. Most likely, we will again encounter the phenomenon of the “parliamentary director,” who in his day was Oleksandr Volkov. The functions of this person will include precisely organizing situational votes, ensuring bribery, blackmail, and all the procedures and technical details associated with this process².

The Fate of the Opposition

If everything is clear with the Regions, who received a voting machine, then with the opposition it is the opposite.

As is usually the case, behavior after one election is dictated by the prospects of the next. In our case — presidential elections.

PR’s political technologists have long been grooming Tiaghnybok for the role of presidential candidate against whom Yanukovych will be able to win in the second round. Generally speaking, PR and Svoboda exist in mutually beneficial symbiosis; they need each other to scare their respective voters. It is clear that any other figure, ending up in the second round, would defeat an unpopular president. However, the intrigue is currently developing in such a way that the only opposition leader capable of not alienating voters is Klitschko, who received his percentages exclusively for his “pretty eyes.”

And here a whole tangle of problems arises immediately. The opposition should unite to show its voters that their main goal is the fight against PR. Such a union requires a leader. The leader will automatically be viewed by voters as a presidential candidate for 2015. Currently, Klitschko could become that leader. However, he has two big problems. The first is his own faction, which will evidently begin to scatter in all directions. A leader who cannot hold a faction together is a bad leader. Klitschko’s second problem is ideology. Since he has no ideology of his own, he uses the most accessible and primitive rhetoric — namely, “patriotism.” However, in this arena he will never be able to outmaneuver Tiaghnybok.

The only reasonable solution would be to get rid of Tiaghnybok, send him to befriend the communists, and declare UDAR and Batkivshchyna as the opposition. However, this option is hardly feasible in practice.

In general, the main show awaits us precisely in the opposition camp, and the main hero thus far seems to be Vitali Klitschko. If he manages to figure out politics, which is still somewhat different from boxing, we may see many interesting things. At least, the challenges facing this person are far from simple.

The most likely scenario seems to be one in which formal attempts at opposition unification will be undertaken. If such an attempt succeeds and the leadership question is resolved, the unification will fall apart closer to the presidential elections — provided, of course, that the Rada survives until these elections, which is highly doubtful³. If the leadership question is not resolved, then opposition unification will prove impossible.

The Course of the Illness

Despite the fact that the Regions now seem like clear winners, this by no means means that the situation is indeed so. Of course, PR will try to squeeze the maximum out of the current situation. For example, the loose nature of the majority and the ability to attract “independent” majoritarian deputies for situational voting will allow PR to encroach upon the holy of holies of the Ukrainian “social contract” — the so-called “social package” in the form of various benefits and privileges for the “simple people.” Evil reformers from the Cabinet will push through “anti-people” laws amid the indignant outcries of the opposition and… the Party of Regions.

However, PR’s ideologues and political technologists have never understood and, it seems, will never understand that violation of the “social contract” means a loss of legitimacy. That is, people simply stop respecting the state, and it disappears, as was the case with the USSR. And in such a situation, a “semi-majoritarian” parliament is the worst thing one could devise. The majoritarian deputies, whom PR today perceives as easy prey and simple objects for manipulation, will scatter in all directions at the slightest signs of systemic glitches. As a result, the most unexpected coalitions may form in parliament, and the most unexpected decisions may be adopted. I should remind you that our declaration of independence was adopted in a majoritarian parliament with a communist majority⁴.

Since the probability of various troubles in the near future is great, and the state is doing everything in its power to make it even greater, surprises may well accompany the tenure of the future Rada, up to and including early elections.

What This Means for Us

When people vote for a party on the grounds that it positions itself as “against” the authorities, one should always find out exactly which actions of the authorities are meant. When you begin to clarify this, it turns out that in most cases the actions of the authorities and those who are supposedly against them coincide. Of course, the opposition strives to “protect the people” and will always oppose the authorities’ initiatives. However, the regular harm from the state occurs because it uses certain methods, not because of who those methods are used against. The struggle between the opposition and the authorities occurs exclusively over determining the victims (or beneficiaries) of one policy or another. For example, the authorities decree to shoot all redheads, and the opposition heroically fights to shoot brunettes. The damage to society is caused by the shootings themselves, by the very “right” of the authorities to shoot anyone they like.

Below is a table of some key positions, in my opinion. For UDAR, one should write “unknown” for all positions; in this case, I had to draw conclusions based on the party program, which is, of course, extremely unreliable. For Svoboda, there is the practice of this party, as well as the practice of national socialists worldwide.

It is clear that this table is rather arbitrary, but in any case, with the exception of purely symbolic, in my opinion, foreign policy issues, we see a convergence of approaches among the majority of parties.