Blue &Yellow: Politics and Economics in Ukraine

The election dispute in Ternopil's local election has ended poorly for BYuT. The Economist has an article concerning the recently completed election, where BYuT (for some reason they use YTB) came in fourth place with the Svoboda bloc coming in first. The article claims that the poor showing for the prime minister's party suggests a collapse in support nationwide. The US Open Source Center also comes to the same conclusion based on media analysis (Tymoshenko Defeat in Ukraine Election Shows Falling Popularity, March 20, 2009).  The Economist article downplays possible electoral manipulation and BYuT's decision not to campaign as significant factors in the party's loss.

YTB allegations that administrative resources in Ternopil were deployed in favour of United Centre, thus skewing the result, miss the point. Mr Tyahnybok’s Svoboda took 2.4 votes for every one claimed by United Centre, and there are no suggestions that its success was the result of administrative resources. The party’s success in the strongly nationalist region suggests that voters disenchanted with the current crop of politicians are shifting their support primarily to leaders espousing populist chauvinism as real wages decline, loan burdens increase and redundancies grow.

I don't think that BYuT missed the point, voter fraud is not a rare event in Ukraine and Svoboda is a fake party that's meant to draw votes away from major parties. What this election result suggests is that voters are more likely now to throw away votes,a  point made by the article. Its also risky taking too much from  the Ternopil situation.  EDM has a piece about Svoboda’s  fortunes and some background about the leader (Volume 6, Issue 56). 

Freedom, is essentially a party of one man, the charismatic forty year old Tyahnybok, who has long been a pariah of Ukrainian politics - for a good reason. Its original name was the Social Nationalist Party whose symbols looked very much like those of Hitler's National Socialist Party. Tyahnybok believes there are too many Jews and Russians in Ukrainian politics and economy so he suggests re-introducing the Soviet-era ethnic origin entry in passports in order to increase the percentage of ethnic Ukrainians in positions of power. Tyahnybok was expelled from Yushchenko's caucus in parliament in the early 2000s for an anti-Semitic and Russophobic speech. In his most recent interview, Tyahnybok said that he did not regret making that speech (Ukrainska Pravda, March 16). 

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Freedom's victory is a worrying signal for democracy in Ukraine, yet it should not be overestimated. First, it won in only one of Ukraine's 27 regions, and this region is among the poorest and most nationalistic. Second, Freedom's campaign was reportedly supported by Yushchenko's team as a counterweight to Prime Minister Tymoshenko's party, which won the Ternopil election in 2006. It is hard to predict how Freedom will fare once this support is withdrawn.Third, Tyahnybok has a strong rival whose party if it chose to run in Ternopil would have been among the winners, as Tyahnybok himself admitted. This is thirty four year old Arseny Yatsenyuk, who is from the liberal camp. Despite his youth, like Tyahnybok this prodigy comes from western Ukraine and has managed to serve in a wide range of positions including as deputy CEO of a private bank, acting central bank head, foreign minister and parliament speaker. Yatsenyuk resigned from the latter post late last year to found his own party with an ambitious name, Front of Change.