Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has called Ukraine’s election, apparently won by President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, a backward step for democracy marred by “the abuse of power and the excessive role of money”.

Out of the 450 parliamentary seats being contested, 225 will be decided by a proportional system among the parties that achieve over 5% of the vote.  The other half of the seats were contested in first-past-the-post races in 225 single-mandate constituencies.  At the time of writing, Yanukovych's Party of the Regions has just over 34% of party list votes, compared with just over 22% for the main opposition Fatherland party headed by the jailed former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko.  The Party of the Regions is also predicted to take 114 of 225 single-mandate seats, which would secure a majority in the 450-seat assembly.

The Party of the Regions stood on a platform of “stability”, which it contrasts to the years of “chaos” under the Tymoshenko premiership of 2007-10.  It says that it will get rid of Ukraine’s dependence on energy imports by increasing the production of oil, coal, and shale gas.  It has also pledged to make Russian a second language.  The opposition, on the other hand, has talked of the “enormous evil” of the Party of the Regions and has called for the impeachment of the president and the cancellation of immunity for all officials.  Tymoshenko wants to “resolve the crisis” in relations with the European Union.

The surprise of the election, however, has been the rise of the far-right Freedom party which looks set to comfortably surpass the 5% threshold for representation in parliament.  This is up from just 1% in 2007.

The party was founded in 1991 under the inauspicious name of the Social-National Party of Ukraine, and its emblem was swastika-like.  It is led by Oleh Tyahnybok who was expelled from President Yushenko’s Our Ukraine party following a speech in 2004 in which he said that the country was ruled by a “Muscovite-Jewish mafia”.  Freedom’s motto is “Ukraine for the Ukrainians”.  It insisted that a singer of Congolese descent should not represent Ukraine at the Eurovision song contest in May 2012.

Its election campaign concentrated on the theme of fighting the “oligarchic dictatorship” and protecting the Ukrainian language.  With regard to Russia, Freedom stresses the need for "a policy of equality, and not one guided by the principle of 'big brother' or 'small sister'”.  Freedom also calls for the cancellation of the Kharkiv agreements, which extended the stationing of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Ukraine's Crimea until 2047 in exchange for a discount on imported gas. When asked about Ukraine's possible joining the Russia-led Customs Union, Tyahnybok said: "We think that our country should head for Europe”, overlooking the fact that far-right parties are not looked upon with favour by the European Union.

Tyahnybok attributes the relative success of Freedom in the election not just to his clear policies for Ukraine but to a general “rising popularity of nationalism in Europe”.