On Thursday 10 parties signed the Declaration of the Unification of Democratic Forces, which is in fact an electoral bloc, Interfax-Ukraine reports, citing the press service of Our Ukraine. The declaration was signed in the presence of President Viktor Yushchenko in the offices of Our Ukraine.
After the ceremony the Ukrainian president declared: “A complicated negotiation process between Ukraine’s democratic powers has met with success. The Declaration of the Unification of Democratic Forces, forming a single electoral bloc and single political party, was signed before our eyes. We have left behind an extremely difficult period. Today Ukrainian democratic forces are again united and they are strong. I wish success to this electoral bloc and these political forces.”
The declaration was signed by Viacheslav Kyrylenko (Our Ukraine), Yurii Lutsenko (Forward Ukraine), Borys Tarasiuk (Narodnyi Rukh Ukrainy), Anatolii Matviienko (Sobor Ukrainian Republican Party), Yurii Kostenko (Ukrainian People’s Party), Volodymyr Stretovych (Christian-Democratic Union), Vladyslav Kaskiv (Pora), Yurii Karmazin (Defenders of the Homeland Party), Yevhen Hirnyk (Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists), and Mykola Katerynchuk (European Party of Ukraine).
The declaration talks about supporting the political course of the Ukrainian president. “In signing the declaration, our political powers are laying a foundation of unity in the democratic camp and committing themselves to guaranteeing the creation of a single democratic political party — one that expresses and defends national development priorities and European social-economic and political standards in Ukraine,” the document states.
The signers of the declaration urged other democratic forces that are ready to unite in a single national-democratic party to join it.
Lutsenko will head the electoral list of the democratic force bloc of Our Ukraine-People’s Self- Defense. The top 10 leaders in the electoral list are Yurii Lutsenko, Viacheslav Kyrylenko, Arsen Yatseniuk, Anatolii Hrytsenko, Mykola Katerynchuk, Olha Herasymiuk, Vikor Baloha, Ksenia Liapina, Ruslan Kniazevych, and Volodymyr Ariev.
In an interview given to the Inter television channel President Yushchenko underlined that the first group of top 10 people in the democratic force bloc is built according to the logic of introducing new people in this bloc to voters, not according to the party principle, the president’s press service reports.
Viktor Baloha, the head of the Presidential Secretariat, will head the bloc’s electoral headquarters.
COMMENTARY
A “megabloc” or a “common grave”?
The Day asked Viktor Nebozhenko to answer the question: “What results will the new bloc bring?”
“Above all, I am concerned with the huge PR campaign in which the politicians and the bloc participants, who are calling themselves a megabloc, have already begun to believe. Politicians with microratings, who are not noted for specific influence in the country, cannot unite and call themselves a megabloc. First, so far this is more of a microbloc because their combined power can rely on 10 percent of the vote. Second, if Lutsenko becomes the leader, I do not understand how his left-center beliefs will merge with openly right-center ones. Third, the right wing is making a big and cowardly mistake, a Ukrainian one, so to speak, because it is difficult to be courageous.
“The right wing is one of the few ideological currents. Let’s not talk about the quality of its leaders. But they have an ideology linked to Ukraine, capitalism, and the West. Still, they could not hold onto their position and refused to find their own electorate now, and keep it: there have always been 3-5 percent of nationalists in Ukraine, but they have never had their exponents; they have always been used. And now the same thing is happening. They are being invited to enter a flabby union, which is a repetition of 2002, 2004, and 2006. It is bad that we do not have a five-party system, where you have the right and the left, communists and nationalists, because in such a situation the center is always flabby, always cynical, and always pragmatic, and the center is capable of all sorts of configurations.
“Moreover, it is not quite clear who will be doing the work. You know, if you take the BYuT, no matter what people said, Tymoshenko traveled throughout half the country, while the rest were working on a much lesser scale; they were earning more after the elections. The Party of Regions has a different system of working with voters. And Our Ukraine continues to follow the principle of political parasitism. At first they were profiting from the national-democratic idea; then they exploited Yushchenko’s personality. Now they have a fresh, new leader, who has to add fire to the electoral campaign. I mean Lutsenko. This too is a matter of concern.
“Finally, relations among Lutsenko and the rest of the leaders will be very complicated because they all know each other well (both good and bad things). They will fight not for votes but for Yushchenko’s attention, for financing, for getting closer to the Secretariat, for anything but establishing a new and efficient party structure. We are thus destroying the idea of the party and of nationwide parties. It’s bad enough that the idea of parliamentarism is experiencing a deep crisis. Now a second ‘gangrenous’ leg is being attached to it, i.e., when parties appear to be either projects or part of a future presidential campaign.”
