During the last elections 2.73 percent of Ukrainian voters ticked the box “Against Everyone.” Last year the figure was 1.77 percent. Ukrainians polled by The Day say that, while the entire country is witness to glaring abuses, they are demonstratively catching “fleas” on a body afflicted with the metastases of corruption. Voting against everyone was their way of expressing their protest. In fact, 2.73 percent almost lets a party into parliament. This percentage should be of interest to the new wave of politicians and prompt the current political class to make a careful study of its mistakes and reach appropriate conclusions.
Two point seventy-three percent is a real niche for an essentially new political force, the Against Everyone Party. What are its prospects? The Day invites all interested readers to join this discussion.
The Day asked: Why did you vote against everyone, and who or what can change your stand?
Olena PLAKSIUK, manager of a game center, Khmelnytsky:
I am one of those Ukrainians who are not simply interested in politics but who analyze everything going on behind the political scene. Each time I ask myself: “What next?” I asked myself this question when it became clear that there was no way to avoid the early parliamentary elections. It didn’t take me long to find the answer, namely, that the new elections would bring the same people to parliament, and that nothing would change in my life and the life of my family and friends. That was why I voted against everyone. It may be naive, but I think that by casting my ballot for no one I made “them” give the quality of their “product” another thought. I don’t want to have a minister who doesn’t know the unit of radioactivity! I don’t want a militiaman who has worked in agriculture all his life! Why should I vote for those who in the end will form a government made up of nonprofessionals, to put it mildly? I don’t want to be a guinea pig in their experiments. I want to go to bed knowing, for example, that the health minister will not allow a bird flu epidemic to spread in my country.
I not only voted against everyone, I urged all my friends and colleagues to do the same. One vote is a drop in the ocean, ten votes is a wave, a million votes is a force that can bring the wind of change, even if it doesn’t happen tomorrow.
Kateryna LUDCHENKO, cell phone sales manager, Donetsk:
I read this joke a week before the election: “There are two kinds of trouble in Ukraine: fools and those who vote for them.” This is my laconic explanation of why I voted against everyone. There is a stereotype that everybody in Donetsk votes for Yanukovych. Wrong. All of them, Yanukovych, Yushchenko, Tymoshenko, Lutsenko, and many others are united by one thing: a thirst for power. However, in their breakthrough to the political Olympus, they appear not to know how to use this power (not in their interests but in the national interests) and why they actually need it. They know how to speak (not all of them, though), but are absolutely unable to act; they know how to spend their vacations in high style, they keep their own books in enviable order, but they can’t lead the country. That’s why they have to go. Yet they don’t even know how to go. In other countries, after political and economic bankruptcy people tender their resignations, but in our country?
I reacted loyally to the news about the early elections. Let them have elections every year. Then perhaps we will actually rejuvenate our politics and rid it of all those “talking heads.”
Liudmyla ZALOHINA, engineer, Simferopol:
For a long time I was not sure whether I should vote in the elections. I think my emotions as a voter are understandable; none of the political forces in the fifth Verkhovna Rada have justified the electorate’s expectations. I was ambivalent. On the one hand, I didn’t want to cast my ballot for anyone who would once again disappoint me, but on the other, I felt a protest rising in me, a protest against everyone. Then I realized that if I didn’t vote, someone in the election commission might use this advantage and cast my ballot for me. So I went to the polling station and was happy to see the box “Against Everyone.” I saw that this was precisely what I needed; it corresponded to my mood and desire.
How should this be assessed? This is an expression of a voter’s protest against the time wasted by the fifth Verkhovna Rada, a protest against their backstage wheelings and dealings, a protest against MPs who are too busy getting even with each other to resolve any problems of our country and its people. As for effectiveness, I don’t think that voting against everyone was of much help, but considering that there are quite a few protest ballots like this, someone may figure things out and come to his senses in this country.
Olha SKYBA, philologist and associate professor at the Department of Ukrainian Literature at Taras Shevchenko National Pedagogical University, Luhansk:
I heard that the International Observation Mission of the European Institutions called on our country to implement last year’s recommendations of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and eliminate the “against everyone” option. However, I am sincerely proud that the Ukrainian MPs refused to follow these recommendations from abroad. Against-everyone votes are only legally taken into account when distributing seats in the next Verkhovna Rada, and the electorate can thus indirectly influence the alignment of forces. The number of people who voted against everyone increased exactly twofold in the past year and a half (1.8 percent in 2006). In these elections 600,000 people (enough to populate an entire city) did not vote for any of the candidates. A few more votes and the “against everyone” candidate would have surmounted the three percent barrier. I am sure that this increase in the protest electorate is explained by the fact that people are convinced that it’s impossible to change anything. Before Sept. 30 I saw countless campaign slogans, but none of them offered an effective program aimed at fulfilling promises. I was strongly tempted to vote for a party whose leader spoke correctly about the need to make a Ukrainian breakthrough, but there were names on the slate I could not support because of my moral principles. Over the past five years I have become totally disillusioned with our politicians. This attitude became even stronger after the Orange Revolution. Foreign spin doctors, playing into the hands of certain forces, have divided this country into two parts, totally oblivious of their accountability for inciting animosity. I don’t like the leftist parties in parliament because they are selling their votes to parties that serve big capital. So far I see no alternative to Ukraine’s current political system; popular moods can change only with the passage of time, or if the existing system is cardinally changed.
Recent sociological studies show that about two-thirds of the residents of our country do not believe that the elections can have an effect on their life. New players are not appearing on the political field; all the parties and their leaders have been in power to one degree or another, and there is a certain degree of popular distrust of them. Add here the factor of inadequacy of the proportional election system, which Ukrainians as a nation simply have not matured enough to reach. The “against everyone” option is moral self-gratification for those who disagree with the current political course; by voting against everyone they will not feel responsible for anyone who is elected. I fully agree with the pop singer Ruslana Lyzhychko, who said if the box “Against everyone” were replaced by one saying “To hell with all of you,” the absolute majority of the Ukrainian population would have checked it.
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The democratic coalition undertakes to raise the barrier required to enter parliament to five percent and hold elections to parliament and local councils on different dates. This is stated in the BYuT-NU-NS coalition agreement on the Web sites of these political forces.
The section devoted to the coalition’s action program states that it is crucial to upgrade the Law of Ukraine “On Political Parties in Ukraine” and codify pertinent Ukrainian legislation.
In particular, the signatories undertake to hold elections to the VR and to local self-government authorities on different dates, upgrade the proportional election system, including local elections, introduce a clause concerning the confederation of parties based on the European standard, and raise the barrier to five percent during parliamentary elections.
EXPERT OPINION
Iryna BEKESHKINA, sociologist and senior research fellow at the Institute for Social Studies, Democratic Initiatives Foundation:
Two point seven percent isn’t much. It means that the most committed people went to the polling stations and others simply didn’t make it there. They were too lazy. All the polls indicated that the “against everyone” percentage would be much higher: five or even six percent. But even then I said that these people simply won’t come to the polling stations.
I think that this protest manifested itself in a considerably lower turnout. We analyzed the reasons why people don’t want to vote: 60 percent because they no longer trust anyone, any parties, any politicians.
But 2.7 percent is anything but a dangerous trend. It is dangerous when the turnout decreases. In other countries - ones we call democratic - the turnout can drop in three cases. First, when people no longer care, when nothing is changing; second, when everything is more or less normal, so there is no sense in wasting energy and time going to the polling station; third, when nothing is normal and people realize that the situation will be bad whether or not they cast their ballots.
In this respect, European countries are very different. In the Scandinavian countries the turnout is up to 80 percent and this doesn’t surprise anyone. In Poland, even when it came time to put the country’s EU membership to the vote, the turnout was a mere 53 percent. And this was critical because 50 percent is the required minimum.
