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Ukraine 2006 Parliamentary Election

Ukraine held parliamentary and local elections on March 26, 2006. The March 26 Rada (parliamentary) and local elections offered the Ukrainian people the chance to freely express their political views and are an opportunity for the post-Orange Revolution government led by President Viktor Yushchenko to make manifest its democratic bona fides.

Most of the parties and blocs, whether with or without much hope of entering the Rada over the three-percent threshold, have engaged in a vehement and vociferous political fight. The lesser parties (Socialists, Communists, Speaker Lytvvn's bloc, Kuchma-crony party SDPU(o), radical Progressive Socialist Vitrenko, a progressive PRP-PORA bloc, and the independent Orange rightist party of Kostenko) in many cases were busy spewing their own venom in this largely negative campaign.

All sides were able to compete for voter loyalty without hindrance. Parties and blocs of parties were able to travel and promote their product freely. The Yushchenko government, unlike its Kuchma-led predecessor, issued no "or else" guidance to media outlets, which in turn displayed much less bias than in the past. Analysis suggests media ownership still played a role in political coverage, with the little watched or read state-owned media favoring President Yushchenko's Our Ukraine bloc and privately-owed media hewing more closely to their bosses' preferences. Still, even in these cases, the reportage was much more balanced than in 2004.

Even though numerous smaller problems remained in Ukraine's political landscape, the 2004 and 2006 election environments represented two different worlds. Most importantly, there was freedom of speech for all parties, no government efforts at falsification, and a range of options, not just a simple choice of two candidates. Tymoshenko had visited every enterprise she wanted to, and more importantly, she had access to every local media outlet possible in the two provinces. The contrast could not have been greater with what Yushchenko faced in 2004: shut factory gates, blocked roads, denied airport landing clearances, and only negative local media coverage.

International observers noted that conduct of the Rada election was in line with international standards for democratic elections, making this the most free and fair in Ukraine's history. Unlike the first rounds of the 2004 presidential election, candidates and parties were able to express themselves freely in a lively press and assembled without hindrance. There was no systemic abuse of administrative resources as there had been under the previous regime.

Verkhovna Rada elections held on March 26 were the freest elections in the country's fifteen years of independence. They were the first conducted since the introduction of a number of changes to the electoral process, most significantly that all candidates ran on party lists and the threshold for a party to win seats in the parliamentary was lowered to three percent. There were pre-election concerns about voter lists and staffing polling station commissions, but independent monitors attributed these problems to disorganization rather than a government effort to exclude parties or voters from participation. The elections went smoothly and observers reported that they were free, fair, and transparent. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) assessed that the elections were in compliance with domestic law, met OSCE and Council of Europe commitments, and the overwhelming majority of voters were able to exercise their voting rights. Five of the 42 parties running received enough votes to win seats in the parliament. There were reports of isolated cases of pressure from local enterprise directors and employers to vote for a designated candidate.

In contrast to the parliamentary elections, there were some problems in local elections also held in March for representation to regional and local councils and mayors. There were accusations that authorities manipulated the vote count in some elections. The mayoral election in Cherkasy was particularly controversial, as authorities prohibited a series of popular candidates from running based on corruption charges that observers said were politically motivated, and the election results were cancelled. The regional election commission there was unable to convene a new election. Courts, the prosecutor general's office, and the Verkhovna Rada investigated this election and a new vote was held on November 5, which international and domestic observers determined to be free of major fraud. November 26 mayoral elections in Chernihiv and Poltava, where the elected mayors chose to take Verkhovna Rada seats to which they were elected rather than remain local officials, occurred without evidence of major fraud; a third mayoral contest held on the same day in Kirovohrad was nullified after local election officials removed one candidate from the ballot hours before the polls opened, leaving the candidate no recourse to the courts. The election was re-run in February 2007.

Individuals and parties could, and did, freely declare their candidacy and stand for election. To be registered at the national level, political parties must maintain offices in at least half of the regions and may not receive financial support from the state or any foreign patron. The Supreme Court reserves the right to ban any political party upon the recommendation of the Ministry of Justice or the prosecutor general. No parties were banned during the year. The Party of Regions and the bloc of former Prime Minster Tymoshenko (BYuT), whose government the President dismissed in September 2005, finished ahead of the pro-presidential Our Ukraine bloc. Other parties passing the 3% threshold to enter parliament were the Socialist Party of Ukraine and the Communist Party of Ukraine. No party held the majority of Rada seats needed to form a government. Following four months of difficult negotiations, the Anti-Crisis Coalition was formed by Party of Regions, the Socialists, and the Communists.

Fundamentally, voting for the Verkhovna Rada reinforced the results of the ultimate Orange win in the 2004 presidential election with remarkably similar aggregate numbers: a majority of Ukrainians supported politicians/parties with overtly pro-Western, pro-reform orientations. The 2006 results also confirmed substantial shifts in the electorate from the 2002 Rada election. Besides Western-oriented, pro-reform Ukrainians, winners were, first and foremost, the Tymoshenko Bloc (BYuT), and secondarily Party of Regions and the Socialists, plus the Democratic Initiatives Polling firm and newly empowered locally elected authorities. The biggest losers were Rada Speaker Lytvyn as an individual and President Yushchenko's People's Union Our Ukraine as a party, secondarily Orange splinter forces like Kostenko's Ukrainian People's Party, Pora-Reforms and Order (Pora-PRP), and Yuri Karmazin's Bloc, as well as pro-Russian hard oppositionists Natalya Vitrenko, the SPDU(o), and the Communists. With only five parties in the Rada, and Vitrenko forced to reprise her role as a street-protest gadfly, the Ukrainian political scene may actually be more stable than many had feared leading up to the election, even though the same intra-Orange squabbling and Orange-Blue battles are almost guaranteed to continue in 2006 and beyond.

Regions' heavily pro-Russian campaign rhetoric (pro-Russian language, anti-NATO, pro-Single Economic Space with Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan) undercut the appeal of two parties who made the trio of issues the center of their campaigns: Natalya Vitrenko's People's Opposition Bloc (2.9%) and the Ne Tak! bloc centered around the SPDU(o) (1.0%), along with the Communists (3.7%). Vitrenko ran a vigorous street campaign, falling just short of the threshold. The SPDU(o), which received 6.3% of the 2002 Rada vote, bought extensive billboard ads throughout urban Ukraine but had no organization or street presence whatsoever. The 2006 results and disappearance from the political scene confirmed the loss that it and its leader Viktor Medvedchuk suffered in 2004 as the most reviled force behind the excesses of the Kuchma regime. While the Communists would have 21 seats in the next Rada sitting, their 2006 showing is but a shadow of the 20% they received in 2002. They ran a nearly invisible campaign; their dedicated electorate is dying off, and Regions has effectively taken the eastern and southern anti-Kiev protest vote that voted communist in 1998 and 2002.

The new coalition formed a government, confirmed August 4, 2006, led by Prime Minister Yanukovych. This, the first government formed after the extensive constitutional amendments brokered as part of the Orange Revolution, saw the Prime Minister's influence and power growing, often at the expense of the President.