Freedom in Exchange for “Order”
General discontent. This is how the International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES) assessed the Ukrainian public mood in 2002 by holding a nationwide survey in mid-September (1200 individuals were polled). The survey shows that most Ukrainians are dissatisfied with the current domestic (84%) and, particularly, economic (86%) situation, think that Ukraine is not a democracy (53%), are worried about serious corruption in the state and are pessimistic about the prospects of eradicating it (85%), do not believe in the ability of law-enforcement bodies to restore the honor of an unjustly convicted individual (55%), consider that inferior courts are under relentless external pressure (73%), do not believe that their votes can really decide the outcome of elections (66%), and support none of the existing political parties (65%).
However, the survey report demonstrates noticeable variability in the mood of our compatriots. For example, despite the feeling of the inability to change anything in this country by way of voting, 81% of those polled still said they had participated in the spring parliamentary elections. Besides, 89% of the Ukrainians intend to go to the polling stations during the 2004 presidential elections, although 44% do not believe and 27% doubt that the elections will be clean.
No less paradoxical looks the way the pollees assessed the human rights and freedoms situation in Ukraine. For instance, although the overwhelming majority of them consider it very important to defend basic human rights, 46% believe it is more important to maintain order in this country than defend rights and freedoms (26%). Even those pollees who think that democratic changes in this country are being carried out too slowly or do not occur at all consider it more important to maintain order.
Among other trends singled out by IFES pollsters is reduced confidence in the central governmental bodies and high-level officials. The level of trust in the President and Verkhovna Rada dropped 8% compared to a similar poll in 2001 and is now 22% and 23%, respectively. The Armed Forces have also lost a high level of public trust they have enjoyed for the past 11 years — from 70% in 2001 to 48% this year.
“We cannot say the general public mood in Ukraine has worsened this year,” Oleksandr Stehniy, SOCIS socio-political surveys department chair thus commented to The Day on the IFES report. “The conclusion about general discontent over the national situation has been always made in the past five years. Yet, it is possible that the situation will tend to deteriorate in the future. What will primarily tip the balance is inadequate domestic heating, mass-scale power outages, low wages and salaries, social inequality, a high crime rate, and despicable plight of the increasingly fee-charging health care system.”
INCIDENTALLY
US State Department is going to hold a $300,000 grant competition to monitor human rights and freedom of the press in Ukraine, Interfax-Ukraine quotes State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher as saying. In his words, official Kyiv has not yet given its consent to this monitoring.
