Party System of Ukraine

The multi-party system in Ukraine started to form in 1990 when the parliament repealed Article 6 of the Constitution of the USSR which proclaimed the Communist Party a “core” of political system and “leading and guiding force of the Soviet society”. Thus, parliamentary elections of 1990 were held on a competative basis, since not only the representatives of the Communist Party participated in them, but also independent candidates. In 1990 the first party (the Ukrainian Republican Party) was officially recognised. During the next years political parties started to spring up like mushrooms: 7 parties were registered in 1991, 6 – in 1992, 16 – in 1993. Before the start of parliamentary election campaign of 1994 30 parties had already been registered, and representatives of 14 of them were elected to the parliament. In subsequent years the number of political parties continued to increase, and as of April 2003 there were 123 registered political parties. In 2003 the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine carried out extensive inspection of all parties and, as a result, their quantity decreased to 98. As of May 19, 2010 there were 180 registered political parties in Ukraine.

The following factors had a key impact on development of party system in Ukraine:

1) weak public support of political parties. It is worth mentioning that in 1994, when the first parliamentary elections to the Supreme Council of independent Ukraine were held, among 4079 parliamentary candidates 2813 did not belong to any political party; and from 404 MPs elected (as of June 1996) 203 were independent and did not belong to any political party. According to the survey carried out in June 1995, only 31.2% of the respondents believed in necessity of building multi-party system in Ukraine, and the share of those who were ready to give power to political parties and movements was only 8%. The surveys conducted by the Razumkov’s Center from October 2001 till October 2009 revealed that the level of full confidence in political parties has never exceeded 5%, and the level of complete distrust has ranged from 48.9% to 20.6%;

2) lack of effective mechanisms to influence the executive (up to 2005 when amendments to the Constitution entered into force). Constitution of 1996 significantly restricted the possibilities of the parliament (and, hence, of political parties) to adopt legislation and to influence the executive. All parliamentary decisions on draft legislation could be easily blocked by the head of the state with the help of veto, which had to be overriden by two-thirds majority of all MPs. The president could appoint the Prime Minister only with consent of the parliament, however, the parliament could not propose his own candidature of the Prime Minister, he could only agree or disagree to approve president's nominee. All members of the government had to be appointed by the President and the head of state had right to dismiss them whenever he wanted without parliamentary consent;

3) peculiarities of electoral systems which were applied during 1994, 1998 and 2002 parliamentary elections. These systems led to political defragmentation of the parliament by independent MPs, who declared themselves responsible only to their voters in respective constituencies, representatives of small and pro-government parties. As a result, during 1990s stable majority within the parliament was absent (with few exception to this), MPs frequently changed their fanctions, the government could not rely on parliamentary support.

Дата добавления: 2015-07-20