Choose the Chosen: Why Poroshenko Is "Dissolving" the Rada

Choose the Chosen: Why Poroshenko Is "Dissolving" the Rada

Bankova was until the last moment and remains an opponent of early elections. However, after his visit to the United States — where Poroshenko faced not only difficult negotiations with the American leadership but also a rather prickly NYT article — in interviews with Ukrainian channels he played the role of the "bad cop."

"I want to emphasize that the Constitution gives me 30 days to respond to the absence of a coalition. I emphasize that the parliament does not have those 30 days. I do not intend to give them. And on the first day I expect that this decision (to form a new coalition and form a government — ed.) will be made," the president said.

The next plenary session of the Rada is scheduled for 12 April — MPs, if they want to remain as they are in the current balance of forces, have one week left.

UP tried to figure out what will happen if the president does announce early elections, who will run and in what positions, and what results can be expected.

Who the president is speaking to

The Constitution lists three reasons why the president has the right to send the Rada to a new round of elections. Since the Rada has not dismissed the government and is holding sessions on time, only the option remains that "within one month a coalition of parliamentary factions has not been formed in the Verkhovna Rada."

Batkivshchyna and Samopomich left the coalition on 18 February. It is from that date that Tymoshenko in her comments counts the life of the Rada without a coalition. But Lyashko's faction announced its exit from the parliamentary rostrum only on 29 March, although the radicals themselves had declared this last fall.

What Poroshenko meant in his interview when he said that "parliament does not have those 30 days," and since when a coalition does not exist for him, remains a mystery.

MPs, if they want to remain as they are in the current balance of forces, have one week left

Dmytro Larin, UP

More interesting is whom this "message from the president" was addressed to.

Poroshenko's words were meant to be heard by the People's Front. If over the past plenary week the BPP faction has already grown by three deputies who were once expelled from Samopomich and is actively working to woo others, the People's Front shows no visible results in this direction.

On the contrary, a UP interlocutor in Yatseniuk's faction said that this issue does not worry them.

"To be honest, we don't need this at all, these are all their problems. But we are ready to take three untainted deputies, and let BPP decide how to live on," said one People's Front deputy.

However, in his "message" Poroshenko hinted that if the NF really wants to play at a "two-party coalition," it has to do something for that, otherwise they will have to go to elections where Yatseniuk's party has minimal chances.

The second addressee of Poroshenko's statement is a number of unaffiliated single-mandate MPs for whom the prospect of new elections is far worse than joining BPP.

Poroshenko's message is unlikely to motivate the so-called "small" factions of the former coalition to return. Samopomich after all entreaties categorically refused to save the situation the "coalition government" had brought the country into. Lyashko, after failed attempts to bargain for the speakership or two ministries, moved into the "opposition." And Tymoshenko has already officially stated that she is withdrawing from all coalition negotiations. It seems Batkivshchyna's headquarters are dreaming of early elections, exhilarated by the latest sociological data.

Her Majesty Sociology

For a long time BPP and NF leaders insisted that dissolving the Rada and new elections are a last resort to be used only if there are no arguments left for agreement. In BPP's interpretation this means either Yatseniuk resigns while NF stays in the coalition, or there will be elections. And then everyone is on their own.

Yatseniuk's team had no choice but to scare that in the case of elections Western funding would stop and the balance of power in parliament would not change dramatically, except that the Opposition Bloc might strengthen its positions.

However, recent sociological studies show that the situation would indeed change.

According to the latest polling data from the Razumkov Center and KMIS, the main outcome of parliamentary elections, if they do take place, will be the absence of a winning party. Instead there will be 3–4 parties (BPP, OB, Batkivshchyna, Samopomich) that will receive roughly similar scores. At the same time, those similar scores will mean very different things for them: for BPP it would be a complete failure, whereas for the Opposition Bloc and Tymoshenko's party it would be a significant strengthening of their positions.

Furthermore, the powerful People's Front faction that won in the last elections by party lists will disappear, its rating dragged down by the prime minister-"kamikaze."

Parties currently in the Rada that could return in new elections include Svoboda and Anatoliy Hrytsenko's Civil Position, which in the last elections approached the 5-percent threshold but did not pass it.

The only truly new player on the political field, according to surveys, Ukrainians see as the political project of Odesa governor Mikheil Saakashvili. If Saakashvili's party can participate in the elections, it would have every chance of entering the Rada.

For Poroshenko, who is threatening to call elections, such a composition of forces in the future Rada would be very problematic. Strengthening Tymoshenko's positions, with whom Petro Oleksiyovych has failed to reach an agreement since the Orange Revolution, the arrival in parliament of his harsh critics from Svoboda and Hrytsenko's party bodes ill for BPP. The majoritarian seats, on which Poroshenko's party was "most successful" in the last elections, will not make up for that gap.

Iryna Bekeshkina, director of the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, draws attention to the fact that it will be even harder to reach agreements in a new Rada.

"Polls show that seven, maybe even eight, parties will pass, with small differences between them. That means it will be very difficult for them to reach an agreement, and forming a coalition will be even harder than now. The effectiveness of work will only worsen, that is certain," Bekeshkina told Ukrainska Pravda.

She predicts that voter turnout will be low because the patriotic uplift in society has already passed and people are again disappointed in politicians.

"If the elections 2014 were held at a high point, now society is tired, turnout will be low. I am sure the law will not change, the majoritarian system will remain, and that means a new wave of voter bribery awaits us. When people lack special motivation, lack a real choice, because 35 percent of voters have decided, they will be much easier to buy off. Populism will be popular in these elections," Bekeshkina believes.

So, the situation in the Rada would change noticeably in the event of early elections, but whether it will become easier to find compromises when the number of negotiators increases is an open question.

"So what actually happened? They can't reach agreement among themselves now? In the next composition it will be even harder to agree," the director of Democratic Initiatives says on this point.

How they vote and who counts the votes

When they ran for office and signed coalition agreements after the Maidan, parties promised that one of the main priorities would be adopting a new electoral law. To replace the notorious mixed system of elections, where half the parliament is elected by lists and half by single-member districts. In Ukrainian realities the system that was supposed to bring deputies closer to their voters turned into a banal sell-off: first leading parties sell districts to candidates by fielding non-viable opponents against them, and then the single-mandate MPs buy everything that moves in those districts — from precinct election commission members to ordinary voters.

Before the elections in 2014 year the old Rada predictably failed to agree on adopting changes and moving to open party lists. But this did not happen even after those elections, when parties that had promised to abolish majoritarian sell-offs and open lists obtained an almost constitutional majority.

The main reason is precisely that half of the deputies were elected by majoritarian districts. Convincing people who spent a ton of money on their districts to give up this practice proved impossible.

The term of Central Election Commission head the decorated Ohendovsky ended back in 2014 year

FOCUS.UA

After the coalition began to crack, the issue of a new electoral law was completely put on hold.

If the coalition is not formed within the period Poroshenko sets and he does announce elections, it will be simply impossible to change the rules of the electoral game, since doing so during an election campaign is prohibited by law. Given party ratings, abandoning the hand-controlled majoritarian system would be tantamount to political suicide for the president's party. And two political kamikazes in one Rada term is already too much.

The question of forming a new Central Election Commission is also hanging in this bundle. The term of the decorated Ohendovsky-run CEC ended back in 2014 year. At first the authorities promised to change it after local elections; later Lutsenko promised to renew the CEC after the second rounds in big cities. At the end of 2015 year Speaker Hroisman swore the CEC issue would be resolved before the New Year, but the question still hangs in the air.

According to the law, the composition of the CEC is approved by parliament based on the president's submission. He, in turn, forms this submission based on proposals from all groups and factions of the Rada.

BPP and NF last submitted their proposals to Poroshenko back in November of last year. However, the president still cannot decide.

Typically in Ukrainian politics, in situations of possible elections there is a political proverb: it matters not how they vote, but who counts.

Friends by coercion

So the country is kept from elections only by whether BPP and NF can gather 226 votes in their factions by Poroshenko's deadline to form a two-party coalition.

The factions Samopomich and Lyashko's Radical Party refused to take part in this process, and the last hope for the "big" factions to create a coalition within decency remained Batkivshchyna's faction.

At first Tymoshenko's team put forward five noticeably populist conditions, and after that added the demand to pass 18 of her bills.

As UP interlocutors in Batkivshchyna recount, on 1 April BPP and the People's Front agreed only to the demand to support farmers from the state budget.

As of 6 April, the BPP and NF factions together count 222 deputies

Dmytro Larin, UP

When on 5 April Tymoshenko officially stated that her faction was moving into opposition, the "big" factions had no options left other than "tivering" (buying off defectors).

Three people negotiate on behalf of BPP: Speaker Hroisman, Sergei Berezenko, who is close to the president, and APU deputy head Vitaliy Kovalchuk.

Last week BPP already "persuaded" (though Tymoshenko insists they bought) three deputies who were once expelled from Samopomich: Iryna Suslova, Pavlo Kyshkar and Viktor Kryvenko.

Suslova told journalists she joined BPP of her own accord and received no "incentives."

However, Ukrainska Pravda sources report that the price of Suslova's friendship was the position of head of the Mykolaiv customs office for her 29-year associate Roman Krol. Krol received the post in January, and by March Suslova had the desire to join the BPP faction.

Regarding another new "Poroshenko-ite" Kryvenko, UP interlocutors in Samopomich admit that he is close to the odious businessman Vasyl Khmelnytsky. In particular, the deputy chaired the supervisory board of the IT university BIONIC University, created on the basis of Khmelnytsky's scandalous Bionic Hill park.

And Kyshkar, BPP's third acquisition, was by former colleagues accused of possibly playing for Serhiy Klyuev when the regulatory committee could not remove his immunity.

"We suspected him of a strange game, it came to the point that we almost controlled his voting," shared one Samopomich deputy.

Meanwhile, according to UP, several more unaffiliated MPs may soon join BPP, including former Svoboda member Sergei Rudyk, former radical Artem Vitko, deputy-"spadshchyna" Serhiy Mishchenko and Yevhen Rybchynskyi.

In the NF faction negotiations are handled by Yatseniuk's friend Andriy Ivanchuk.

Despite official statements from the UKROP party, a UP source in that political force said that last week Ivanchuk spoke with oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky about several of their deputies joining NF. However, no agreement has yet been reached.

"Our guys don't want to," was the terse comment from a UKROP interlocutor.

So far the People's Front names only two deputies ready to join their faction. These are former Azov commander Andriy Biletsky and former Svoboda member Yuriy Bublyk.

As of 6 April, the BPP and NF factions together count 222 deputies, so if all the mentioned candidates do join their ranks, then on 12 April the country could indeed get a new coalition. The question of how its creators intend to manage this motley company remains a hard puzzle. Hardly even the strictest party dictatorship can guarantee that the new coalition will not quickly meet the same fate as the old one.

Roman Romanyuk, Roman Kravets, UP