Although Viktor Yanukovych was not the Diaspora’s choice for President of Ukraine, nor that of Ukrainian citizens of Canada, where he got only 27 more votes that the combined total of the “against all” option and the spoiled ballots, he nevertheless won — fair and square — in elections that were accepted as democratic and transparent by all foreign observers.
Therefore (Tymoshenko’s last-ditch court appeal notwithstanding), we have to accept the results and learn to live with a Yanukovych Presidency. Since the President appoints the Foreign Minister, who in turn appoints the Ambassadors, we also have to accept the fact that the next Ukrainian diplomatic corps we will be working with in Ottawa will consist of Yanukovych appointees.
Yanukovych, on the other hand, has to accept the fact that he has received the weakest mandate of any Ukrainian president since independence. Not only was his margin of victory (3.5 per cent) the smallest ever, he was also the first Ukrainian President who did not get a majority of the voters to accept him. He has a very deeply divided country to run and must realize that he cannot move too far in any one direction without creating serious rifts.
While his core pro-Russian South and East vote remained solid, so did the core pro-Western West and Central vote. The difference was in the 3.5 per cent of swing voters who most likely turned to Yanukovych not because of any desire to move closer to Russia, but because they were fed up with the bickering of the Orange partners, or blamed the Tymoshenko government for the downturn in the economy.
Therefore, Yanukovych has to tread very carefully before embarking on such ventures as giving the Russian language any higher legal status (as if it wasn’t already the de facto official language of Ukraine), extending the lease of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, or selling off Ukraine’s gas pipeline system to Russian interests. In fact he doesn’t have the constitutional right to unilaterally do any of these things.
One good thing about the constitutional reforms of 2006 is that the President no longer enjoys the power that Kuchma had. Much has shifted to Parliament and the President must be able to work with Parliament. It’s high time Ukraine went all the way and became a full parliamentary democracy, as are most European democracies (the most notable exception being France). This makes especial sense in a country where the electorate is so deeply divided. You cannot give any one person the kind of power that a Ukrainian president has when that position can be determined by a switch of 3.5 per cent of the voters. You need a full parliamentary system where a government that has representation from all regions can be put together.
You also need parliamentary reform. The current system where all members are elected on party lists gives too much power to the parties themselves and defeats its own purpose as deputies switch sides anyway, even though they have no popular mandate to do so. We believe the previous system where half the Verkhovna Rada was elected by party lists and the other half through individual constituencies had the proper balance. And the individual constituency candidates should be elected by a truly “majoritarian” system, in other words having runoffs between the top two contenders when no one gets a majority on the first ballot, instead of our own archaic Canadian “first-past-the post” system.
Other changes we would recommend would be replacing the need for an absolute majority on all parliamentary votes with a simple majority of all those voting for, or against, eliminating the loophole which allows any group to stop the work of parliament by blocking the podium, as well as eliminating the parliamentary immunity rule which has turned the Verkhovna Rada into nothing but a haven for criminals.
Marco Levytsky is the editor and publisher of Ukrainian News, a bi-weekly newspaper distributed across Canada.
