The anniversary of the parliamentary elections is a few months away, and in the depths of the civil society a need is gradually taking shape to analyze in detail whether the political parties that made it to the Verkhovna Rada are fulfilling their election platforms and promises. The Ukrainian Society of Financial Analysts recently launched this important research, developing the proper scholarly methodology and completing its study. The Day is grateful to project supervisor Olha Nosova, who provided us with the results of this socially important research.
As the authors point out, the responsibility of political parties for keeping their election pledges is one of the crucial features of democracy. Under conditions of mature democracy, the most votes and hence a mandate to exercise legislative and executive power go to the party that, by means of its earlier actions in parliament and government, proved its ability to strictly follow the defined political course and put it into practice. This is the very way that the real power of the people is carried out under conditions of developed representative democracy, the authors of the research stress.
In their opinion, however, the Ukrainian political system still does not have an institution of responsibility. Will this research become a real step toward its formation? There are real prerequisites for this, which are determined not by political analysts’ subjective, diffuse comments but objective research pursued by the society’s experts using scientific tools. The introduction of this institution will also encourage Ukrainian voters to pay more attention to the content of parties’ election platforms and be guided by them while choosing the ruling political party for the next term.
This research has special relevance to the proportional election system, as it would compel parties to build up their own “credit” history and use it as a basis for competing for votes, although only experts can estimate the degree of professionalism or responsibility of a party’s real actions. The researchers propose three scales: “values — lobbying” (the latter as open or latent disregard of values); “professionalism — nonprofessionalism”; and “responsibility — populism.” According to the society’s analysts, nationwide values include freedom and free labor (further development of the competitive environment, clear property guarantees, protection of human rights); human development and dignity (investments in education and science, protection and development of culture, healthcare, promotion of the family as the foundation of society, care for seniors); national renaissance (development of national labor ethics, respect for national traditions, integration of all regions and ethnic groups); state sovereignty and assertion of national interests; trust; and social solidarity.
Professionalism provides a clear formulation of goals and their correspondence with values; realization of limited resources, orientation on strict budgetary limitations; optimizing approach to the simultaneous resolution of conflicting tasks; ability to combine current and long-term goals, orientation on development; providing for national competitiveness.
Responsibility means concern for financial and macroeconomic stability; transparency of political actions; publication of results and expenses; readiness to cooperate with political opponents for the sake of national unity and development.
Lobbying is none other than the striving for any kind of monopolization or implementation of privilege mechanisms; targeted character of proposals, mostly concealed.
Nonprofessionalism is marked by disregard for the principles of budgetary limitations, promises to resolve conflicting problems fully and simultaneously. Populism means ignoring the social danger posed by the acceleration of inflation and the exceptional role played by financial and macroeconomic stability as a prerequisite for improving living standards; violating the hierarchy of economic, social, and political goals; concealing expenditures and problems that generate political actions; unreadiness for reasonable give-and-take with political opponents, orientation on winning at any cost.
It is interesting to note the rankings assigned to parliamentary parties, which are based on the scholarly methodology and rigorous analysis of the financial society’s experts. According to the average expert rating evaluation of draft laws initiated by the Party of Regions (PR), this party ranks first among the five parliamentary parties, with 0.8 points. According to the results of the analysis of correspondence between the contents of proposed draft laws and pre-election pledges, the PR’s ranking could be twice as high.
During its first six months in power the party lost half of all the possible points it could have scored if the draft laws it initiated had fully complied with its platform documents. The BYuT received the highest grade for correspondence between proposed and supported draft laws and its election campaign promises. The average grade for all corresponding draft laws is 1.5 (the highest possible grade being 2). This is the highest ranking among the five parties.
Thus, compared to other factions, the BYuT lost the smallest number of points owing to the gap between some of its lawmaking initiatives and election pledges, scoring 74% of the possible number of points according to the scale of correspondence between the contents of initiated draft laws and pre-election platform clauses. The total grade for the correspondence between the contents of the analyzed draft laws proposed by the BYuT and the bloc’s election pledges is 54, the average number for all parliamentary parties.
According to the evaluation of correspondence between the contents of draft laws with an economic orientation on their own pre-election promises, which were submitted to the Verkhovna Rada, the Our Ukraine bloc ranks second: the average grade for proposed draft laws is 1.33 (the highest possible being 2). In comparison to other factions, the bloc lost an insignificant number of points because of discrepancies between its draft laws and campaign promises — 28 percent.
However, according to the number of draft laws aimed at resolving economic issues, the bloc is behind the PR, the BYuT as well as the Socialist Party of Ukraine (SPU). Therefore, the total grade for the correspondence between all initiated draft laws and pre-election promises is at the same level as the rankings of other parliamentary factions (meanwhile, in view of the rather high average grade, a higher total grade could have been expected). The consistency of this political force’s position is observed with respect to the scale of “values — lobbying.” Despite its small membership, the SPU turned out to be the most hardworking party, as indicated by the number of initiated economic draft laws for one lawmaker (1.2), which is four times higher than the points accumulated by the three more numerous factions (PR, BYuT, Our Ukraine) and two times higher than the Communist Party (CPU). That is why — and also thanks to the fact that most of the SPU’s proposed draft laws were in line with the party’s election promises — the SPU scored almost the same total grade as the PR, the BYuT, and Our Ukraine; according to the total ranking for legislative activity in general, it even scored a higher ranking.
As for the average ranking of the correspondence between the draft laws proposed by the SPU and its platform provisions, the party ranks third among the five parliamentary parties with 1.8 points. The SPU scored 60% of the potential number of points. After forming the anti-crisis coalition, the socialists became participants of a sort of political market. But they are trying to limit the “exchange fund” with those elements of their political position whose rejection will not lead to essential electoral losses.
According to the results of its legislative activity, the CPU scored the least number of points on the scale of correspondence between initiated draft laws and election pledges. This is explained by the size of the faction. Nevertheless, the communists rank second by the number of draft laws for one parliamentarian. Each member of the CPU faction initiated twice as many draft laws as the members of the PR, the BYuT, and Our Ukraine. Since these draft laws were mostly focused on solving social problems that are of traditional priority to the party rather than economic ones, they obtained quite a low grade for their relevance to economic growth, competitiveness, and people’s welfare.
