Depending on the degree of skepticism that one has, there are various estimates for how long the new Volodymyr Groysman government will last.
The lowest number I have heard is three months. The better guesses of the better informed tend to run at between six months and 12 months
Such speculation tended to happen before the government had even settled in and made their intentions known, again by deed.
It appears that Ukraine has entered a period of relative calm.
Another wave of post-Yanukovych work is under way, and we should see how those at the helm perform, but few people have any doubts that, in the not-too-distant future, there will be fresh parliamentary elections in Ukraine. Therefore now is the time when people should be starting to prepare for this eventuality.
The parliament that was sitting when the revolution ended had been elected in October 2012.
After the shootings on Feb. 20, enough of the people who had once backed Yanukovych found their spines and came to parliament to begin the ousting of his power structure, starting with the dismissal of (also now Moscow resident) Interior Minister Vitaly Zakharchenko.
Those same people also approved the appointment of the first government of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and then they were cajoled into passing a law on lustration before parliament was dismissed and fresh elections were held in August 2014.
The 2014 parliamentary election was largely fought between new political parties and groupings.
Samopomich was new, the Bloc of President Petro Poroshenko was new and residing inside it was Vitali Klitschko’s UDAR Party, itself newly created for the 2012 vote; and the People’s Front party led by Yatsenyuk was formed.
The Party of Regions needed to find a new name (shame they didn’t feel the need to find some new faces) and so declared their “contribution” to the democratic process was to be named the Opposition Bloc. The parties who campaigned under old names (read: ideas, values, tactics) were the Radical Party of Oleh Lyashko and the Batkivshchyna grouping of Yulia Tymoshenko.
It should be noted, contrary to belief that some hold as true, that the Communist Party of Ukraine also took part in that election, they (like Oleh Tiahnybok’s Svoboda Party) failed to pass the 5 percent threshold to gain representation in parliament, the idea that the party had (at that time) been banned was an invention of the Moscow Myth Factory.
The most important factor, by far, of that political rejuvenation, was that, under many of these party names and banners, a large number of civic society activists, former Maidan people, reformers, came into the halls of power hungry for change.
A second vitally important stage of the political rejuvenation in Ukraine happened in December of 2014 when the second Yatseniuk government was formed and that government included key reformers like Aivaras Abromavicius, Andriy Pivovarsky, and Natalie Jaresko.
We stand now at a time of preparation for further rejuvenation of the political system in Ukraine, the approval rating of some of the aforementioned parties is so low that we can be certain that new groupings are being formed, this is a positive and necessary development.
Who might lead these parties? And how have our current elected representatives fulfilled their mandates – which come with the title “people’s deputy”?
People like former investigative journalists Mustafa Nayem and Sergii Leschenko have not shied away from the challenges of rooting out what’s fundamentally wrong in the Verkhovna Rada, they (along with Abromavicius in his resignation speech) have not been bullied or bought into backing down from cleaning up what’s wrong in the structure by naming names.
At the same time, Leshchenko was instrumental in getting a law passed on the financing of political parties, which is key to moving away from the oligarch-dominated past.
Other reformers like Tetiana Chornovol, who was beaten badly during the revolution, have mostly performed adequately.
Volodymyr Parasuik is another person who came from Maidan to parliament. His passion for his country is evident, but at times he has acted like a thug and such behavior from a parliamentarian is unacceptable.
The Opposition Bloc has, en masse, stifled just about any reform that they could. There already exists sound arguments as to why most of those people should, en masse, be lustrated, but maybe their stand-out achievement so far is in trying to sabotage key reforms linked to transparency and declarations of assets and so voters can reflect on that.
Voters can also reflect on the pop-up-protests staged by Lyashko’s Radical Party, like that which appeared outside and then opposite the Cabinet of Ministers in November of 2015? There was a lot of noise, and a few people gathered when cameras were around, but apart from that, this show from Lyashko was as false as the logic behind the demands this handful of people were making. And voters can reflect on the Tymoshenko-backed rally with her characteristic babushki on a day out carrying plastic bags which converged on parliament on Feb. 16. Crass manipulations such as this have to stop.
What we have at this present moment is the luxury of time to check voting records, to measure reforms and resistance to reform. We know who wanted to appoint independent professionals to run state-owned enterprises and we know who wanted to put buddies into those same positions to enable ongoing (and unacceptable) corrupt practices. We can also see who connived to manipulate the timing of the release of important information relating to the investigation of Maidan crimes.
Politicians in Ukraine don’t really pay much attention to their constituents unless it is election time, new grassroots political movements and new movements led by proven reformers can, therefore, use the present space to form plans, and to communicate those plans and present their records of accomplishment to the electorate.
This next phase of evolution in the Ukrainian political scene is exceptionally important, it should be a historic milestone in Ukraine’s development if handled by capable and well-intentioned people. Some of them are named here already, I can think of other names too.
One group of people who most deserve some representation at a national level, and who should be the biggest winners from what we are about to see, are those who are presently living in the occupied territories of eastern Ukraine. There is a lot of discussion about elections being held in these areas, indeed, it is a requirement of the Minsk Agreements. While there are certain key conditions necessary for a vote to be held fairly in the occupied territories, and these are related to security as well as freedom of information, the bottom line is that the people of Donbass need to be allowed to elect whoever they want.
Another important consideration in deciding about the format of any vote in the occupied areas is the question of who can vote, the only fair answer to this question is that all of the people who were Donbass residents prior to the war must be able to vote, whether they decided to remain resident there or whether they are now living as internally displaced people in another part of their country. There are many such people, some have dedicated the last couple of years to helping other internally displaced people build a new life, what if they formed a political party?
A new Donbas party would be capable of communicating to those who remain in the occupied areas, and a party who promised to honestly continue to help the people of Donbass, and can demonstrate their success at doing just that over the last two years. The problem with the current “leadership” in the non-government controlled parts of Ukraine is that they came from nowhere, they have no credibility or legitimacy or popularity, they’re thugs imposed on the people of the region by Moscow.
Two years ago we didn’t know who to trust. Deeds have shown who we can trust, and who we cannot. The next generation of leaders in Ukraine needs to be those people who have kept their word, who have demonstrated how they put the interests of the state ahead of their self-interest, and who have worked for their communities through an exceptionally telling time.
The people of Donbas are hardworking Ukrainian citizens who have contributed much to their country in the last quarter of a century, we know that they have a penchant for wanting to elect “their own” so present them with a democratically formed option. Prior to the war there were many opinion leaders there, business people who employed large numbers of people, lawyers who commanded respect, it was mainly individuals such as this, intellectuals and professionals, who left due to persecution once the bandits with automatic weapons came to town, now they need to show the strength that people of Donbass are famous for and they need to fight to get their land back from the occupier.
If they have equal ability to campaign, something that is guaranteed under Ukrainian election law and something which, also according to Minsk therefore, they should be entitled to, a New Donbass Party could conceivably be the key to settling this whole conflict. Someone needs to stand up for Donbass, now.
As for the new national leaders, they will emerge in time. Sooner I hope rather than later.
