Autumn ratings
The last few months have taken a heavy toll on Ukrainians’ trust in the nation’s leadership. This is the verdict of two sociological think tanks that last week publicized the results of their September surveys.
According to a survey of 1,803 respondents, conducted on Sept. 18-21 by the Democratic Initiatives Fund and the Kyiv-based International Sociology Institute, the number of citizens who distrust President Yushchenko exceeded the number of those who trust him by 8 percent. In contrast, as recently as March 2005 the level of popular confidence in the president was 43 percent higher than the level of distrust. Over the past six months popular confidence in the now sacked government and parliament has also plunged sharply.
Similar trends emerge from another survey conducted on Sept. 18- 20 among 1,253 respondents by the Institute of Social and Political Psychology of the Ukrainian Academy of Pedagogical Sciences.
Many experts no doubt predicted social disappointment after the wave of public scandals within the leadership, followed by the high- profile dismissals. They also assumed, however, that one of the sides in this confrontation would find itself in a more favorable position. According to widespread opinion, the now sacked prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, would win more of the people’s sympathy in keeping with “established Ukrainian tradition” [an obvious reference to the rule of President Leonid Kuchma, who would inadvertently boost the popularity of his dismissed prime ministers — Ed.]. According to this belief, if Tymoshenko and her team had succeeded in prolonging this tempest of scandals involving accusations against the president’s team, then the high wave of social support for this “struggle against corruption in the ranks of the leadership” would take Tymoshenko’s bloc through the open doors of parliament, catapulting her back into the prime minister’s seat. However, our fellow citizens are not as predictable as many think. So far Yulia Tymoshenko has not emerged victorious.
According to the Social and Political Psychology Institute survey, 47 percent of those polled favor the president’s decision to sack the government, as opposed to 33 percent of those who disapprove. Since the beginning of the month (i.e., before the crisis) the level of confidence in Tymoshenko dropped even lower than the level of trust in President Yushchenko.
Another indicator of a political leader’s standing, i.e., the popularity of his or her political force, does not guarantee Tymoshenko’s predicted success in the polls. As of mid-September, Tymoshenko’s political force, the BYuT, was second to the People’s Union “Our Ukraine,” with Yushchenko as its honorary chairman. These two political forces have the votes of 15.5 and 18.2 percent of those polled, respectively. Meanwhile, according to the survey conducted by the Democratic Initiatives Fund and the Kyiv-based International Sociology Institute, the parliamentary election results may be entirely different if voters associate the party not with its leader but with the top five members in its election roster. In the survey, where the names of Bezsmertny, Yekhanurov, Poroshenko, and Rybachuk are indicated next to the People’s Union “Our Ukraine,” this party takes third place, with 14 percent of the popular vote. The Tymoshenko Bloc and Party of Regions top the list with 20 percent each. This is not surprising, since in both surveys the former National Security and Defense Council secretary Petro Poroshenko tops the list of least trusted politicians. This means that his presence in the official party roster can substantially undermine Our Ukraine’s chances of success. Therefore, the question of who occupies the top five spots in the election roster is critical for the presidential bloc, especially so given the fact that the president’s immediate milieu has been discredited in recent corruption scandals, not to mention that there are no strong public leaders in the presidential team.
In general, six months before the parliamentary elections the parties have divided the popular vote as follows. There are four clearly defined groups of political forces. According to the Social and Political Psychology Institute survey, the top three frontrunners are: People’s Union “Our Ukraine” with 18.2 percent, the Tymoshenko Bloc with 15.5 percent, and the hypothetical bloc of Yanukovych with 10 percent of the popular vote. The following forces can expect to clear the parliamentary hurdle: People’s Bloc of Volodymyr Lytvyn (6.4 percent), the Communist Party of Ukraine (5.6 percent), and the Socialist Party of Ukraine (5 percent). Vitrenko’s Progressive Socialists (2.6 percent) and the Party of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs also stand a chance of clearing the hurdle if they run independently. The obvious outsiders are Kostenko’s Ukrainian People’s Party (1.3 percent), the Green Party of Ukraine (1.2 percent), the Civic Party Pora (1.2 percent), the Rukh People’s Movement of Ukraine (0.9 percent), and SDPU(o) with 0.6 percent.
According to the survey by the Democratic Initiatives Fund and the Kyiv-based International Sociology Institute, the leaders are the same but the results are slightly different (see above). The Socialist Party of Ukraine (10.5 percent), the Communist Party of Ukraine (7.6 percent), and Lytvyn’s Bloc (5.7 percent) also have potentially good results. The Progressive Socialist Party (3.3 percent), SDPU(o) and the Party of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (1.7 percent each) may also risk running independently. Other political forces, including Labor Ukraine, the Green Party, Soyuz Party, Pora, the National Democratic Party, Ukrainian People’s Party, the Rukh People’s Movement, and others, are doomed to failure if they run independently. Consequently, these groups of parties will have different goals during the parliamentary election campaign. The leaders will try to install one of their own representatives as prime minister or play a leading role in a coalition that will form the new government. Those in the middle range will obviously compete for the “golden share,” which they would be able to use to advantage during coalition bargaining after the elections. Outsiders that are close to the 3-percent threshold will obviously face the task of surviving politically by making it into the next parliament and forming “small but proud” factions.
The main conclusion that follows from these surveys is that no matter how some might try to invoke the “spirit of Independence Square,” society is increasingly adopting the same attitude it had toward politicians as before the revolution. Levels of confidence in the revolution’s leaders have dropped to pre-revolutionary levels. In terms of many other indicators public opinion has returned to what it was during Kuchma’s presidency, says Iryna Bekeshkina, research director of the Democratic Initiatives Fund. To illustrate, today 60.6 percent of the population believes that Ukraine is heading in the wrong direction as opposed to a mere 16.5 percent of those who think that it is right on track. By contrast, as recently as in March, 70 percent of Ukrainians believed that Ukraine was developing as it should. The public was more enthusiastic even last year, before the presidential elections. Then 26 percent of those polled believed that the country was headed in the right direction. Bekeshkina thinks that all of this proves that the population is currently experiencing “severe disillusionment.” The respondents put the blame for the country’s failures at the feet of President Yushchenko, the oligarchs in the new leadership, and Yulia Tymoshenko, who will obviously face the consequences in the form of modest election results next March.
