Center, Count Off!
People’s Democratic Party (NDP) leader Valery Pustovoitenko and his Trudova Ukrayina (Labor Ukraine) opposite number Serhiy Tyhypko have signed an agreement on partnership and mutual cooperation.
The parties have also announced their intention to develop constructive cooperation of the NDP and Trudova Ukrayina parliamentary fractions to speed up budget, tax, land, and pension reforms. The agreement also calls for the establishment of a task force to draw up a joint action program aimed at forming a broad centrist coalition.
Mr. Pustovoitenko stated after signing the document that the NDP had already signed declarations with twelve centrist-oriented parties, including the Party of the Regions, Party of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, and Democratic Party of Ukraine.
This association, according to Verkhovna Rada Chairman Ivan Pliushch, quite fits in with the new majority. The speaker hopes that former Premier Viktor Yushchenko will join the centrist bloc based on the Agrarian Party of Ukraine, the People’s Democratic Party, and the Party of the Regions.
The conditions under which this can happen “will be clear from talks with the members of this bloc and Viktor Yushchenko himself,” Mr. Pliushch said at a press conference in Uzhhorod. The speaker said he highly esteemed Mr. Yushchenko “as a financier, banker, and economist” but gave him “not very high marks as a politician.”
According to him, the new bloc of democratic forces must be open to all other centrist forces and can be formed before or in September this year.
The Verkhovna Rada chairman also did not rule out forming one more centrist bloc in Ukraine with the participation, for example, of the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (united).
Mr. Pliushch opined that several tentative blocs — Left, Right, Center, and Second Center — could take shape. He also noted that the centrist parties are now engaged in the active process of signing cooperation agreements.
In Mr. Pliushch’s opinion, a new coalition of “state-minded and reform forces” is badly needed. He noted that the third convocation Verkhovna Rada has only a little over six months left for productive work when one takes into account the summer recess. Parliament “faces a host of questions, all of them basically concerning reforms.” They include not only implementation of the national referendum results but also a number of law codes. The speaker also pointed out that the Verkhovna Rada coalition which voted the Yushchenko government out of office and agreed to vote for the new premier “did not consist of reform forces.” This is why, Mr. Pliushch said, Verkhovna Rada cannot work productively without establishing “a state-minded and pro-reform” majority.
Everything Mr. Pliushch said creates an impression that the Center will contest the elections as a single bloc (or one large and several small ones). It is so far difficult to say to what extent this is true, for getting engaged is not yet a wedding.
As to the numerous declarations of coordinated efforts, what can so far be said with certainty is that the parties unlikely to clear the 4% hurdle on their own have begun to briskly sell their services in election blocs. The intensity of this process will depend on whether the parliament will be able to override the much talked about presidential veto of the election law. If everything remains as it is and there are 225 winner-take-all election districts, most of today’s cross-party declarations will remain just words. Should the presidential veto be overridden, then the now numerous centrist alliances will have to tackle the most difficult and simultaneously the most intimate campaign problem: who will head the party list?
