Grassroots want to more actively participate in political decision-making

The Day has already published comments of sociologists on the results of a public opinion poll about the necessity of and nationwide debate over constitutional reform. It will be recalled that almost all experts of the four sociological firms that did the survey came to the following conclusion: the results show inadequate competence of the “average statistical Ukrainian” in the matters of political system reform. In particular, this incompetence is reflected in contradictory answers to various questions about the same things. For example, the pollees agree that all kinds of elections (from presidential to those of local self-government) should be held in the same year (49-54%, according to the four companies), but they do not want the term of the deputies of all levels to be extended by a year, which will automatically occur under this arrangement. Another example. The advocates and opponents of a bicameral parliament account for almost the same (30%) percentage, but what aroused the greatest approval is the president’s proposal to cut the number of Verkhovna Rada deputies from 450 to 381, out of which 300 and 81 represent the lower and the upper chambers, respectively. Roughly speaking, supporting reduction of the number of deputies, the pollees automatically endorsed the idea of a bicameral parliament. One more oddity in the same context. Some politicians think that the establishment of a reduced-strength bicameral parliament will require more public funds to maintain the newly-recruited staff of the upper house. So most of the pollees (about 30%), who advocated cutting the number of deputies, accepted the argument and said, after briefly commenting on the price of this transformation, that it will be more costly for the country to keep up a bicameral parliament than the current one.

On the whole, the analysis of the poll results reveals several factors that determine the opinion of the majority. The first and foremost one is lack of trust in Verkhovna Rada and government as a whole (the same applies to the opposition, as it will be evident below). The fear of having the parliamentary term extended and a pronounced wish to have the number of people’s deputies reduced most convincingly demonstrates the attitude of Ukrainians to the legislative branch. Nor did the Ukrainians like the provision that the upper chamber is not subject to dissolution (about 50% of the polled oppose this kind of immunity for the new chamber). That the Ukrainians do not wish the president and the judiciary to embrace too many powers is evidenced by the pollees’ skeptical attitude to the proposal of authorizing the president to appoint a half (not a third, as is now the case) of Constitutional Court judges, as well as their active support of the idea to appoint judges for a ten-year term rather than until they reach the retirement age, as it occurs now.

Another crucial factor is the desire of people to more actively participate in making important nationwide decisions. Hence the support (about 50% of the polled) for a proposal that laws (except for the laws on taxes, the budget and amnesty) can be passed by a nationwide referendum without having to be approved by any body of government. Also noteworthy is an occasional too ardent desire to speak out on a certain proposed transformation even if one has rather a vague idea of the likely consequences. It is interesting to compare the following. While 60-80% of those polled expressed their attitude to some of the President’s proposals, only 10-12% admitted they “are very interested” in politics and only about 30% of the polled are aware of all or some initiatives of our head of state. Luckily, the so-called educational breakdown of the answers to the question about the referendum shows that, according to Social Monitoring Center director Olha Balakireva, “the more educated an individual is, the more cautiously he/she answers this questions and the more often he/she chooses to say ‘difficult to answer’.” Besides, the sociologist said, pollsters asked test questions to check whether those polled were knowledgeable about the subject of discussion. So if the results are to be revised taking into account the number of those who showed incompetence, this will tip the balance of answers and practically eliminate the difference between those who support and those who oppose the passage of laws by referendum. Ms. Balakireva draws the following conclusion from this, “On the one hand, we see that the government uses the idea of referendum to intimidate the opposition. On the other hand, the opposition also tries to scare the government with the bugbear of referendum. So our shrewd compatriot understands that the provision that laws may be passed by a referendum can be an instrument of manipulations. Therefore, we must first draw up a balanced law on referendums and the different levels of their competence and only then make respective amendments to the Constitution.”

It should also be noted that a considerable part of those polled — 30-40% in almost every question — have remained undecided over the past four months. This seems, for some reason, to be the most honest part of the population: they are aware of a great responsibility they bear even during a sociological survey because any political side can use these data later as an indicator of people’s will.

What aroused almost no suspicions of incompetence was the pollees’ support for the provision that a deputy elected on a political party ticket and then expelled from the respective parliamentary faction is to be stripped of his/her parliamentary mandate. 62-67% of the polled approved this proposal. Incidentally, this is also the least debatable issue in the political circles, which allows making a conclusion that this change is quite acceptable in society and must be legitimized. According to Oleksandr Yakovenko, director of the Ukrainian Institute of Sociological Research, “this is one of the questions to which a very small number of the pollees hesitate to answer. It is highly illustrative: the electorate believes that its interests in Verkhovna Rada must be clearly represented by one political force or another.” We will only add that the introduction of this provision into Ukrainian legislation will make political forces step up their responsibility to the electorate and considerably reduce such a widespread phenomenon as buying top ranks on party lists.

And, lastly, on the attitude of Ukrainians to the opposition and of the opposition to its electorate. Out of those who said they knew the President’s proposals, 85-89% learned about them from TV programs, 45% heard on the radio, and about 50% read in newspapers and magazines. Moreover, 23-26% of the polled said they most trusted the state- owned media as a source of explaining the proposed reform. Only 9-12% of those polled believe the opposition media in this matter. 10-29% prefer to draw information from diverse sources, and 18-38% (depending on the polling agency) refuse to trust both the sate-run and the opposition mass media. About 30% of those polled know the opposition’s viewpoint on the proposed reform (which characterizes the opposition’s attitude to its electorate). Out of the 60% who do not know the alternative opinion, 30% do not even wish to do so (which characterizes our compatriots’ attitude to the opposition).

It will be recalled that the above-mentioned figures are the results of a survey conducted by the four leading sociological agencies (the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, the Socis Center, the Ukrainian Institute of Sociological Research in conjunction with the Social Monitoring Center and the A. Razumkov Ukrainian Center for Economic and Political Studies) at the request of the Presidential Administration on May 12 to 22 in all regions of Ukraine. Each agency polled about 2,000 over-18s. The survey embraced a total 8,117 individuals.