Parties and Blocs in Search Of a Responsible Figure

“World experience will make this country opt for an election model in which political parties will play first fiddle in the elections,” Mykola Mykhalchenko, president of the Ukrainian Academy of Political Sciences, said on November 9, addressing a round table discussion, Parties and Party Blocs in the Parliamentary Election Campaigns and the Problem of a Political Figure and Responsibility. He noted that political blocs are bound to exist under the current conditions, the more so that Ukrainian law allows both parties and blocs to participate. However, according to Mr. Mykhalchenko, the parties that go to the elections on their own are “pioneers who will show whether or not it is worthwhile.” The discussants saw very few pioneers of this kind in Ukraine. According to sociologist Oleksandr Vyshniak, only the KPU, SDPU(o), and the Yushchenko bloc stand good chances of clearing the 4% barrier in the coming elections. Yet, the election blocs that have incorporated some well-known brand names could lose a certain number of voters because the latter, in contrast to the leaders, cannot be united mechanistically. “The blocs are sure to lose some votes and gain perhaps even fewer than all the parties running on their own put together,” Mr. Vyshniak said. But he thinks this only applies to the so-called forced blocs, which have mechanistically united some parties to enable them to enter parliament. Another pestilence threatens those blocs led by a non-party person, for example, the Yushchenko bloc which, as Mr. Vyshniak forecasts, will lose a certain number of votes. Moreover, Mr. Mykhalchenko fears that a bloc could fall hostage to the political interests of its leader and his or her entourage.

According to experts, the blocs’ responsibility to the voters will be a hot topic. “The parties have a clear and obvious advantage over the election blocs. A party has a clear-cut structure, ideology, and goal. And although we know that our parties are not saints, we can at least hold them responsible. The point is that voters emphasize the responsibility of the one they elect. It is already a good thing if they can lay claims against somebody. But I don’t understand at all how one can lay a claim against a party bloc. A party bloc is a quasi-party structure with a quasi-ideology and responsibility. Tomorrow, for example, a certain party bloc disintegrates, with the politicians running into their party holes, leaving the voter empty-handed. It is the very nature of political blocs to bear no responsibility to the voters. And the problem of Ukrainian independence-era elections is that we elect those who bear no responsibility for their actions,” Zoreslav Samchuk, director of the expert analysis department of the Academy of Political Sciences, told The Day.