Established parties and incumbent members of parliament didn’t get completely routed in the July 21 election, but voters did an impressive house cleaning.
Thankfully, there will be no more Radical Party of Oleh Lyashko, who had 21 seats, and no more Renaissance or Will of the People, two parties that together had 42 lawmakers who did nothing good for the nation, as far as I can tell. There will be no more Narodniy Front of ex-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk (the party didn’t even run; they had 79 seats). There will be no more Samopomich Party of Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi, which had 25 seats.
At least a majority of the new parliament – and possibly three-quarters of it – will be made up of rookie lawmakers. But there’s still plenty of veteran holdovers to be found from the ranks of three of the five parties elected.
Ex-President Petro Poroshenko’s European Solidarity will get nowhere close to the 127 seats the Poroshenko Bloc has today, but will have at least 26 lawmakers on the party list, plus whatever seats they pick up in the districts.
The pro-Kremlin Opposition Platform will have 33 from the party list, still too many for my liking.
Ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna Party will only get 22 lawmakers from the party list. But it’s enough to ensure her brand of populism lives another five years.
The pro-Kremlin, Poroshenko and Tymoshenko contingents will, nonetheless, be dwarfed in size by a possible majority coalition between President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, which finished in first place, and rock star Svyatoslav Vakarchuk’s Voice (Holos) party, which finished in fifth place.
On the 225 out of 424 seats chosen by party lists, they have 144 seats combined or 64 percent. If they can duplicate their success in the 199 single-mandate districts, they will have a commanding 271-vote majority, marginalizing the other three surviving parties in the new Verkhovna Rada.
It’s even possible that Zelensky’s candidates in the districts will do so well that his party will have a clear majority in parliament on its own, without Vakarchuk’s help.
Voters also strongly rejected the parties of Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, ex-Odesa Governor Mikheil Saakashvili and ex-Security Service of Ukraine chief Ihor Smeshko, whose Strength and Honor fell less than 1 percentage point short of the 5 percent threshold. And they defeated the hideous pro-Russian Opposition Bloc, headed by Vadim Novinsky, Yevgen Murayev and Oleksandr Vilkul.
And, of course, this will be the second parliament in a row with no Communist Party, which is always good news.
All of this bodes well for Zelensky’s agenda. Let’s hope that his agenda is good for the nation.
What it means is that he can probably choose the prime minister he wants with no need to compromise with other parties. He’s said he wants a technocratic one – an economist with no history of political positions. This is a plus if it means he will choose from the ranks of the frequently mentioned candidates: Andriy Kobolyev, Aivaras Abromavicius, Vladislav Rashkovan, Maksym Nefyodov, Oleksandr Danylyuk or Oksana Markarova.
The election results also mean that the president should be able to pick his own prosecutor general, head of the Security Service of Ukraine, foreign minister, defense minister and other people for top posts.
The new show of support from voters will leave the president in a strong position to negotiate from strength in seeking to end the Kremlin’s war.
It will also give him a strong hand in launching a real war on corruption, rather than the mainly cosmetic one by Poroshenko and the non-existent ones waged by the presidents who came before him. Zelensky will have to move quickly on building trustworthy courts with qualified judges, something Poroshenko failed to do. Ukrainians will not wait patiently for another five years if nobody is prosecuted, convicted or jailed for corruption or other serious crimes.
The nation will also expect the new parliament to end their legal immunity from prosecution and pass a law that clearly defines how a president can be impeached and removed from office.
It goes without saying that voters also expect Zelensky and the new parliament to curb the economic privileges of the oligarchs (and this includes billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky, whose TV station buys entertainment shows from Zelensky) and to create a truly competitive economy.
Hopefully, Zelensky’s winning streak at the ballot box will persuade him to drop his ill-considered idea for a lustration law that extends the ban on government service to Poroshenko-era officials.
It’s not needed since voters have shown their willingness to make changes on their own. As far as appointed officials from previous eras, some of them served admirably. Those who did not should simply not be appointed or, if they committed crimes, prosecuted. Those are better remedies than a blanket lustration law.
With power will justifiably come the blame, if Zelensky fails to deliver on his promises or disappoints.
This is Ukraine’s third Election Day this year – two rounds of presidential voting and today’s parliamentary vote. Zelensky is also promising early local elections this year as well, giving voters yet another chance to clean house in the nation’s cities, removing the likes of Odesa Mayor Gennady Trukhanov, Kharkiv Mayor Gennady Kernes — who both tried to get into parliament with the failed Opposition Bloc — and others who should face criminal investigations rather than be in power.
Real elections can be so much easier and more effective than revolutions in changing power.
While the dictatorships around Ukraine are economically stagnant cesspools of human rights abuses, Ukraine – in its own imperfect but dynamic way – is rejuvenating and renewing itself so swiftly with young and fresh political blood that soon few will remember the names of the old communist leaders of bygone days.
Democracy is fun.
