With the election campaign to start officially in late July, po-litical advertising is already well underway. This concerns individual candidates as well as political parties. According to Vitalii Bala, director of the Situations Modeling Agency, the current advertising is mostly of a preparatory nature and spotlights the political forces and people that will compete in the elections. “By all accounts, the advertising that we see today can hardly be called political,” Bala says. “It is preparatory. There are so far no serious slogans or calls except perhaps for visual and audio advertisements. There are appeals to certain strata of the population.”
Assessing the quality of the political campaign, the expert emphasizes that things are going by the book. “The present-day outdoor advertising is classical,” Bala continues. “From this angle, it is of high quality and meaningful. I often hear it said that someone’s advertising is bad and someone else’s still worse. There are certain rules here. Political forces usually count on the people who can vote for them. Before being launched, the advertisement is obligatorily examined by a focus group. This also applies to the promotion clips that assign blame to the previous government.”
This is an instance of political spin which has been quite well learned in Ukraine for many years in a lot of election campaigns. But to what extent do advertising messages meet the real problems of people? We put this question to some of The Day’s experts.
“EVERYBODY WATCH OUT!”
Vitalii KICHKIRUK, member, Regional Initiatives Foundation, a civic board affiliated with the Zhytomyr Oblast Administration:
“The main electioneering method in this parliamentary campaign will be attempts to buy votes by means of food rations, money handouts, churches, schools, and other benefits of civilization at our own expense on credit.
“In reality, citizens of Ukraine are not being given unbiased information on the performance of the current parliamentarians. We can still only guess about the names of candidates to this country’s legislative body. But an alternative was found to this spin: the civic movement Chesno (Honestly) has offered six simple criteria to be met by those who will be deciding Ukraine’s destiny in the next few years: absence of the facts of infringing human rights and freedoms; correspondence between the declared incomes and property, on the one hand, and the actual lifestyle, on the other; an unchangeable political position with respect to the popular vote; personal voting in parliament; non-involvement in corruption; participation in parliament sessions and in the work of parliamentary committees. These activists are already ‘digging up’ information about the future candidates, checking them for probity. Besides, young people can also get unbiased information about the current MPs – the civic organization Moloda varta (Young Watch) monitors the way politicians are delivering on the promises they gave to youth. The results are deplorable so far. Therefore, although there is a tremendous danger of the Ukrainians being bought off again with one-off handouts, there still shimmers a hope that every individual will make a conscious choice.”
“SOCIETY IS BECOMING WISER, ALBEIT SLOWLY”
Illia STARYKOV, Doctor of Sciences (Pedagogy); professor, Psychology Faculty, Sukhomlynsky State University, Mykolaiv:
“Indeed, the election campaign has begun well before the official date. It is only our blind observers who pretend not to see things. Obviously, it is by no means night blindness.
“All I can say about the quality of political advertising in the current election campaign is that its authors and our spin masters are not aware of the difference between the advertisement of chicken drumsticks or personal hygiene items and the one that can enhance the prestige of a candidate or a party. They are still taking us for the hungry rabble. But we are becoming wiser, albeit slowly.”
“BIG PLAYERS WILL LAUNCH MASS-SCALE ADVERTISING LATER”
Viktor PASHCHENKO, Associate Professor, Political Science Department, Oles Honchar National University, Dnipropetrovsk:
“If money is being spent now, this means that, firstly, it is available and, secondly, sponsors do not grudge spending it. It is far more effective to spend money on political advertising shortly before the elections. Yet there is sense in image-building advertising if a politician only begins to ‘hype’ their project, as Korolevska is doing, or tries to get back to politics, as Medvedchuk is doing. Big players will launch mass-scale advertising later, which will in fact present a true picture of the future parliamentary election campaign.”
“IT IS A MORAL AND ETHICAL PROBLEM”
Oleksandr KLIUZHEV, political analyst, Ukrainian Voters Committee, Donetsk:
“This election differs from the last one in that there are potential first-past-the-post candidates. The latter are already working for their voters: they are addressing their public-utilities problems and paying them money. The law has not yet been passed, so we cannot judge them from the legislative angle. Rather, it is a moral and ethical problem. The parties have not yet held their congresses, and we do not know who have nominated these candidates, for what merits, etc. All this calls democratic principles into question.
“It is too early to link the political campaign with Euro-2012. But, obviously, politicians will be broaching this subject. The opposition will demand inquiring into the budgetary funds spent on the championship, while the government will emphasize the positive points of its activity during the competition. These are all problems of a transitional period. Euro-2012 is not a political event, which is stressed in the UEFA regulations. And the fact that, for example, Korolevska’s party ‘Forward, Ukraine’ allows itself to hand out scarves with their own motto and logo before national team matches only reflects their standards. If they are choosing this path, this means they are choosing this kind of standards.”
“WHAT IS THE VOTERS’ ATTITUDE TO THIS SQUANDERING? AN ADEQUATE ONE”
Ihor HULYK, political expert, Lviv:
“In general, I have an impression that this country is in a never-ending electoral craze, which must have begun after Yushchenko’s trick with early parliamentary elections in 2007.
“But the long duration and continuousness of a process in no way means the improvement of the quality of political advertising. It is not the case when ‘repetition is the mother of learning.’ On the contrary, with every new campaign, advertising becomes more primitive and appeals to its imaginary recipient by means of simplified, usually crowd-pleasing, slogans. And, in my view, the makers of this hype are taking the ad consumer for an idiot without memory, principles, and education.
“I recently had to make a business trip to Ternopil oblast. I could see one of the local figures (in different roles, incidentally) dozens of times on billboards along the road. But every time this showed stupidity, superficiality, and unmitigated contempt for those whom this ‘leader’ greets, calls on, etc.
“What is the voters’ attitude to this squandering of fantastic funds and pettiness of mind? I think it is adequate – utter disdain. Nobody is showing this now; only in the most outlandish cases you can see someone spitting in a fit of temper. This will be followed by indifference, as the wave of political hype is surging up. In my view, the efficiency factor of all these billboards, paid-for news, and promotion clips in Ukraine borders upon the statistical error, as do, incidentally, the results of the efforts of those who hyped himself the most.”
“LET US SEE WHAT THE NEW POLITICAL FORCES WILL OFFER”
Ihor KUZHYK, general manager, TV studio Misto; member, Poltava City Council, in 2006-10:
“Obviously, politicians have begun to fling around slogans and want the latter to be planted in people’s minds as soon as possible. But I don’t think that someone cares very much about creativity and search for new messages. Do you remember a Front of Changes advert with a ‘striped’ Yatseniuk? Political scientists explained then at length that these stripes meant that Ukraine on the borderline, on a frontier. This kind of creativity is a trivial attempt to force candidates to shell out. I have not yet seen anything unusual, which would stand out against the overall background. Politicians are dishing out traditional promises: there will be happiness, there will be changes. I think the main emphasis in the upcoming campaign will be put on social issues because the situation is difficult in this sphere. What do the Communists propose? Nationalization of businesses, free education and medicine. What is Korolevska saying? ‘A new economy is a new country.’ What are Fatherland and the Front of Changes promising? A new taxation code. What helped Yanukovych to win? ‘We will beat poverty,’ ‘We will improve life right today.’ In other words, everybody uses, first of all, socioeconomic slogans and avoids radical ones. Those who will broach ideological issues are Svoboda or the far Left, such as the party of Vitrenko who will be shouting that we and Russia are against NATO and for the Russian language. We will soon see what the new political forces will offer – including UDAR whose position is so far unclear.”
By Yulia HUZ, Zhytomyr; Tetiana KOZYRIEVA, The Day, Lviv; Serhii SHEBELIST, Poltava; Viktoria VESELOVSKA, special to The Day, Mykolaiv; Kateryna YAKOVLENKO, Donetsk; Vadym RYZHKOV, The Day, Dnipropetrovsk
