Communist Electorate Fading Into The Sunset

KIEV, Ukraine -- The Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU), which has long been one of the largest factions in parliament, received a record-low number of votes in the March 26 parliamentary elections.


The future of the party looks bleak, as analysts suggest that the electorate traditionally loyal to the Communists has been persuaded by the populist promises of the election’s bigger players and has simply been dying out.

During Ukraine’s three parliamentary elections since independence in 1991, the CPU regularly took about 20 percent of the vote, predominantly supported by elderly people in eastern and southern Ukraine who were nostalgic for Soviet times. For example, after the parliamentary elections in 1998, the Communists gained the largest share of parliamentary seats, winning nearly 25 percent of the vote.

However, the results of Ukraine’s most recent parliamentary elections on March 26 demonstrated a sharp decline in the number of loyal CPU voters. According to the Central Election Commission, the body in charge of tallying and announcing the country’s official parliamentary and presidential election results, the CPU received only 3.6 percent of the votes in the March 26 election, lagging far behind the leaders – the Viktor Yanukovych-led Regions bloc, and the eponymous Yulia Tymoshenko bloc – which won just over 31 and 22 percent of votes, respectively, based on the latest election returns as the Post went to press.

Political analyst Mykhailo Pohrebinsky believes that the CPU lost a lot of its votes to Regions, which attracted leftists with its unequivocal pro-Russian declarations and socially-oriented campaign promises.

“I am surprised that the CPU got more than 3 percent [of the votes] at all,” said Pohrebinsky.

In December 2004, Ukraine’s Parliament approved a 3 percent barrier that parties and blocs must pass in order to enter the legislature, lowering the earlier election barrier of 4 percent. For comparison, the European parliamentary election barrier standard is 5 percent. As if the future didn’t already look bad for the CPU, leaders of Ukraine’s larger blocs have pledged to increase the barrier to at least 5 percent for future parliamentary elections.

“Why do they need the Communists, when there is such a nice guy from the working class who already raised pensions once and has promised to raise them more,” Pohrebinsky asked rhetorically, referring ironically to Viktor Yanukovych, Region’s leader and Ukraine’s former prime minister during the last years of the Leonid Kuchma presidency.

Yanukovych’s initiative to increase pensions at the end of 2004 was widely seen as a populist move to garner support ahead of the presidential elections that seems to have paid off in the long-term, given Regions’ first place finish in the recent parliamentary elections, with nearly one-third of the popular vote.

Yanukovych lost the presidential elections in 2004 against then-arch rival and current president, Viktor Yushchenko, in what turned out to be a fraud-filled carnival of ballot-stuffing by pro-Yanukovych forces that set off the Orange Revolution and changed the country’s political landscape to what it is today.

In any case, political analyst Andriy Yermolaev, said Regions is not solely to blame for the CPU’s failure in this year’s parliamentary elections. Other factors have contributed to the party’s gradual decline in popularity in Ukraine over the last couple of years, he said.

“A palpable dispersal of the leftist-oriented electorate took place before and after the Orange Revolution, when both democratic and pseudo-democratic political forces began flirting with leftist ideas,” said Yermolaev, referring in part to former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s populist moves in the social sector.

The Komsomol calling

No less important, Yermolaev added, is that the Communists’ traditional electorate which has remained loyal since Soviet days is aging, and CPU party leaders have offered little to attract the youth vote.

“The [CPU] needs renewal and modernization as of right now, to put it mildly. The party’s apparatus does not respond to contemporary demands at all,” Yermolaev added.

If the party does manage to restructure itself and reshape its program to better suit current societal conditions, then, Yermolaev said, the CPU would be able to compete for the support of at least 10 to 15 percent of the Ukrainian population, which holds strong leftist views.

Mykhailo Shulha, former Communist deputy in the parliament and deputy head of the Institute of Sociology in Ukraine’s Academy of Sciences, admits that drastic changes in the CPU are needed for it to win back its electorate.

“We have not taken into account how society has changed over the years, and it’s true that most of our electorate lives with a nostalgia for the Soviet past instead of looking to the future,” said Shulha.

Shulha said CPU leaders recognized the need to attract “young blood” to the party and developed a pre-election campaign strategy that targeted young people.

The main slogan of the election campaign – “Vote for the Communists – It’s Cool!” – was viewed by experts as one of the most creative in this election.

It did not, however, help the party win back its previous 20 percent of the electorate.

Pohrebinsky said the declining popularity of the Communists is also due to the marginal impact that the party has had in parliament in the last decade. As a result, the party has tended toward cooperation with more influential pro-governmental forces in the Rada.

Nevertheless, Shulha remains optimistic about the CPU’s future. According to a survey conducted by his Institute of Sociology, 25 percent of the Ukrainian population still supports socialist views, and only about 11 percent have capitalist leanings. Moreover, 10,000 new members joined the CPU last year, Shulha said, and the majority of them are people under 40 years old.

“If you take a look at the current Ukrainian political scene, you’ll see that the leaders represent right-wing parties that came to power because of their leftist declarations,” he said.

“Unfortunately, Ukraine does not have parties that are “political” in the classic sense [of the word], and all political forces in Ukraine are just groups defending their own big business interests.”

Yermolaev agrees, adding that in the fight between Ukrainian parties, ideology is of little importance.

“Our elections are not classic – [in the sense of] liberals battling socialists, or something to that effect. It’s a battle of phantoms, such as NATO and the EU working against [Ukraine developing] closer ties with Russia, as well as a battle of personalities, more than anything else,” said Yermolaev.

Pavlo Shcherbakov, deputy head of the CPU, said that he wouldn’t “over-dramatize the [CPU’s] election results.”

“Every sane citizen of Ukraine understands that the country is not choosing between capitalism and social justice today,” Shcherbakov said.

“In 2004, Ukrainians were choosing between the political philosophies of the West and East,” he added.

“In 2006, they chose between the establishment of pro-Western, American-style democracy and the resurgence of opposition to the national interest. But when these stages are passed, the Communists will have their say.”

Source: Kyiv Post