The Ukrainian Left is living through a trying period. After the epoch of “casting away stones” — traditionally large-scale election campaign promises, undisguised capitalizing on the electorate’s nostalgia, protest, and hopes for social justice — the time came for “gathering stones together,” summing up the intermediate results. Here, even on the face of it, the Left appears to have lost much; apart from losing the presidential campaign, they lost to the presidential majority, parliamentary leadership, its apparatus, and committee posts. Yet the most important fact is the manner in which they lost all this. Was there any struggle at all? Any strategy? Did they show they could really fight and win?
Hitting somebody when he is down is thankless and indecent. Instead, one ought to analyze the situation and try to understand why everything happened the way it did; whether it could have been otherwise, and most importantly, what is happening now in the Left camp and what prospects it has.
Objectively, the unstructured Left swamp is becoming more or less defined. This is a positive phenomenon, of course; it will help certain leftist parties find their own niches in the political structure, including that of the Left camp. It may further transpire that the actual weight of the Left parties is not as hefty as they want to see it. Thus, the Left idea in the current Communist scenario may well receive support not from several dozen percent of the electorate, but several percent, as is the case with most European countries. Especially, after the part of the populace that supported the Communists during the elections as an alternative to those in power takes a sober look at the KPU’s actual achievements after the campaign. Hence the question of whether this process be regarded as a crisis? If so, what kind of crisis — ideological, structural, institutional, tactical, or strategic?
Objectively, changes are already underway in the Left camp, as two Left fractions, the Progressive Socialists and Peasant Party, have vanished in Parliament. The KPU faction, only recently so solid, is slowly but surely losing members, with new political forces emerging: Ivan Chyzh’s All-Ukrainian Association of Leftist Forces, Ukrainian Communist Youth League, and the new Solidarnist parliamentary group. Yet the main thing is what the traditional leftist parties had before the start of the process of changes on the Left political flank, and whether they are prepared to exist in the new environment. Apparently, not quite. All things considered, they intended to rest on the laurels of their election turnout and bide their time, relying on the existing socioeconomic hardships and old slogans to bring them the votes they covet. Moreover, even after losing all the major political battles, the Red leadership, rather than develop new strategies and tactics, continues to recall to its former state nostalgically the in Verkhovna Rada, hoping that everything will eventually go back to normal.
In fact, the Left’s inactivity is amazing. Suffice it to say that the opposition bill is being worked on by the majority, without a single draft from the minority put on the table. Rather than act, the Left prefers to lash out at enemies now including the critically-minded press. Among other things, the Communists accuse The Day of anticommunism. The Editors will not argue the point, except that this newspaper has on more than one occasion carried materials stressing the need to protect the rights of the leftist minority both during and after the parliamentary crisis. Incidentally, this opinion is shared by President Kuchma. The question is whether the press and even the President will be able to protect the Left, considering that they cannot or will not do so themselves? If you don’t want to live no medicine will help you.
Apparently no one can get the Left out of its crisis except the Left itself. However, we might try to help them analyze the situation and find a good solution to the problem. And this is precisely what we are doing. The Day is launching a large-scale discussion, inviting all concerned to voice their opinion. The first step was a round table discussing The Left Idea and Left Parties: Current Status and Prospects. Present were the KPU’s Viktor Ponedilko, Solidarnist leader Petro Poroshenko, and The Day’s Iryna Chemerys, Andriy Myseliuk, Volodymyr Pankeyev, and Dmytro Skriabin.
Volodymyr PANKEYEV: Could one describe the Left movement as being in crisis?
Viktor PONEDILKO: What is happening to the Left movement is best described as a childhood illness of growing up, because there was no Left movement in Ukraine before 1993.
Petro POROSHENKO: I think it would be more correct to discuss a crisis in the tactics of the Left wing in Parliament. This crisis is explained by a number of causes, for the chance to make certain timely concessions was rejected and the appropriate conclusions were not drawn from the presidential elections; the policy of blocking political decisions was also a failure. This crisis consists in the destruction of the KPU faction’s integrity and its inability to defend traditional leftist causes, primarily in terms of social protection. I wish the leaders of the Left had come to the right conclusions, so they could adequately perceive the realities in the Ukrainian political domain and in Ukrainian society as a whole. A constructive approach and willingness to make reasonable concessions would, of course, give the Left a fresh impetus and make it possible to solve the objective problems facing it, like the aging leftist electorate.
Viktor PONEDILKO: What about 46% of the population, people that are strictly Left-oriented who voted for the Left in the last elections? We got those who support the idea of social justice and state patronage. Yes, it’s true that the Left parties failed to put this potential to good use, and the reason was that these parties did not have a clear objective, so getting their candidate into the presidency became an end in itself for every political structure on the Left spectrum. And that objective should have got the better of the forces usurping power in Ukraine. If all those representing the Left political spectrum had realized that they would not solve the problem alone, the outcome of the campaign would have been different. As for recent events in Parliament, one must admit that a number of tactical blunders have been made.
Petro POROSHENKO: It is true that the Left has made serious tactical mistakes, like in choosing its allies. By combining the potential of organizations and their leaders the overall potential was not multiplied. I might point out that there are no personal differences among Poroshenko, Symonenko, and Moroz. Talking for the struggle for the electorate, the situational tactical alliances between our Solidarnist and the Communists and Socialists are quite possible and will be welcome. We believe that there is an acute need to attract the leftist parties to work in Parliament. For this reason we will soon submit our own bill on the political opposition.
Viktor PONEDILKO: There should be a normal law on the opposition, yet we are trying to put the cart before the horse: there isn’t a single law on the opposition in Europe. For example, I recently read the constitutions of two German states, and the opposition has a right to monitor the government even at that level.
Andriy MYSELIUK: How many opposition bills has the Communist fraction drawn up?
Viktor PONEDILKO: We consider a law on the opposition absolute nonsense. The rules used to have a clause securing opposition rights and allowing it to influence the decision-making process: one-third of the Verkhovna Rada constitutional membership could vote on a bill as being at variance with the Constitution. Now it takes 226 votes, which is the formal dictatorship of the floating majority. Unless the procedures allowing the minority to influence the process of passing half- way bills are restored, this Parliament will be like a boat with only one oar, doomed to move in circles. Thus, the sooner minority status is restored with its oversight functions and a ability to influence the legislative process, the sooner normal legislative work will resume.
Andriy MYSELIUK: Don’t you think that what is going on in the Left camp has something to do with its restructuring, so the Communist Party could at last find its proper niche in the Ukrainian political environment?
Viktor PONEDILKO: I can give a short answer: as long as Ukraine retains in its banana republic status any restructuring will be nonsense. The abysmal poverty into which this country is being driven at an increasing rate expands the social base of the Communists. As for people of the so- called middle class, they are oriented a bit more to the right, specifically toward Moroz’s Socialist Party. The higher the living standard, the larger the middle class, the smaller our social base will become. This is an objective tendency, but we are not threatened by this, not yet anyway.
Petro POROSHENKO: If there are any actual changes for the better the Social Democrats will most likely get the most public support, because they actually reflect the interests of our middle class. My estimate is, we’ll be supported by some 15 million voters.
Dmytro SKRIABIN: And so, do you mean that if the middle class grows numerically the social base of the Communists will shrink and that of Solidarnist expand? Meaning that your structures have inherently polarized interests, just as your social bases and attendant strategic objectives differ quite fundamentally. How then do you propose to work together?
Petro POROSHENKO: I have mentioned the possibility of temporary alliances to pass certain bills. We cannot at this stage consider the possibility of an election bloc made up of Solidarnist and Communists. We have different tasks and different constituencies. Granting even that both the Communists and Solidarity see their aim as a prosperous Ukraine, our ways and tactics to reach it are different. Also, one might point to certain irreconcilable differences, because the Communist and Social Democratic ideologies are quite distinct. True, both are on the Left, but there are a number of differences.
Dmytro SKRIABIN: Yet when the parliamentary elections begin their logic is sure to make Solidarnist confront the Communist Party in the struggle for the electorate, on the one hand, and with all those other competing leftist parties, SPU and SDPU(o), on the other.
Petro POROSHENKO: I think that we have our constituency, the lower middle class, and the Communists have theirs. One should never consider Solidarnist as sort of a Trojan horse about to trample the Left’s electorate field. We have a program behind which are specific deeds, rather than sky-high promises or demagoguery. For example, when we broach the subject of social protection it does not mean pie-in-the- sky demands for a higher minimum wage but target-oriented social aid. At the same time, it is necessary to provide jobs for those who can work. In other words, we are a party of realists operating in the Left political range (closer to the center) with social justice as one of our priority objectives, along with the social protection of working people.
Dmytro SKRIABIN: In that case Solidarnist could be regarded as one of the worst threats to the Communist Party, I mean your broaching social justice and filling it with real content.
Viktor PONEDILKO: Above all, such a force had to emerge, sooner or later, in the free Left Center niche. Say, if it starts to take votes away from the United Social Democrats we will be there to help. Second, it poses no danger to the Communist Party. I agree with Mr. Poroshenko that we have different electorates and different social bases, and their paths do not cross. By and large, we are not rivals and it is wholly possible that we will cooperate in order to reach certain common goals.
