Ukraine's politicians and political parties have discovered the Web is one way to woo voters as parliamentary elections approach.
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In fact, even some marginal parties have jumped on the electronic bandwagon, hoping to attract attention they can redeem for votes in the March parliamentary election.
The Post has tracked down more than 25 official party Web sites. That’s just a fraction of the more than 120 parties registered with the Central Election Commission, but all of the major players are accounted for.
Politicians are learning that they can use attractive, well-designed Web sites to inexpensively communicate with voters, to outline their policies or just to polish their images.
The Web’s popularity among the country’s political movers and shakers wasn’t nearly as evident on the eve of the last parliamentary elections four years ago. The Ukrainian Web was in its infancy then, and in the intervening years thousands more voters have become active Internet users. While the number of Ukrainians who regularly use the Internet is still small compared with countries in the West, political forces ignore the Internet at their own peril.
Parties and politicians who have had a presence on the Web for some time have retooled their sites in anticipation of the upcoming elections. Yulia Tymoshenko’s new tymoshenko.com.ua site and sdpuo.org.ua, a new official site launched by the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (united) are examples.
SDPU(u) spokesperson Yury Hovorukha says the new site will help disseminate more accurate information about the party and its members.
“It’s important that we make objective information about our party more readily available,” Hovorukha said. “Much that has been written about our party is based on assumptions. Now, with this site, the public has access to information about the party, directly from the party,” Hovorukha said.
Hovorukha said that the party’s leaders hope that the site will help unite and coordinate the efforts of SDPU(u) members scattered across the country. Most of the party’s offices in major cities have Internet access, Hovorukha added. That represents a big change from four years ago.
The most useful sites, including those sponsored by SDPU(u) and Tymoshenko, are well-designed and packed with regularly updated information. The content is in English as well as in Ukrainian and Russian. The majority of sites are in either Ukrainian or Russian alone and post updates infrequently.
With site-design costing between $1,000 and $5,000, getting a Web site up doesn’t represent a financial burden to most political parties or influential politicians.
Site maintenance, usually limited to posting news releases, is usually handled by the party’s or politician’s existing public relations staff.
The major political players who don’t yet offer Web sites say it is just a matter of weeks before they will.
The SDPU(u)’s Hovorukha said that new sites for leading party members Hryhory Surkis and Viktor Zinchenko will be launched early next year, just prior to the elections.
Dmytro Sennychenko, an adviser to Viktor Yushchenko, says that an official Web site for the former prime minister will be launched soon at yushchenko.org.ua.
He also said Yushchenko has no ties to yuschenko.com, a fan-club site dedicated to Yushchenko launched last month. The organizers of that site have refused to identify themselves, saying only that they are a grass-roots network of Yushchenko supporters.
Still, given that less than 5 percent of the nation’s population has regular access to the Internet, the Web sites are not expected to heavily influence the outcome of elections.
“The Internet will not play a significant role in these parliamentary elections,” said Natalia Lihachova, editor of Telekritika.kiev.ua.
Information from the broadcast and print media will continue to exert the greatest influence on voters’ decisions, she said.
“These Web sites are more about prestige than influence for now,” Lihachova said. “But in time, maybe by the [2004] presidential elections, Web sites could influence public opinion more.”
Roman Olearchyk can be reached at [email protected].
