Civic Position hopes to scrape way into parliament

With parliamentary elections on Oct. 26 and a recent poll showing Civic Position falling short of the minimum 5 percent to enter parliament, the pro-Western party is under pressure to distinguish itself from other parties seeking to present themselves as heirs to Maidan. 

Civic Position’s support for joining both the EU and NATO and fighting corruption places them in the same group as a number of Ukrainian parties including Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s party People’s Front and Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna. 

But their real competition is the Samopomich (or Self-Reliance) party which has also filled its list with fresh faces and activists according to Iryna Bekeshkina of the think tank Democratic Initiatives.

According to a poll released on Oct. 22 by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation Civic Position was projected to receive 4.8 percent of the vote falling short of the 5 percent required to enter parliament.

In the same poll Samopomich, led by Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovy, was project to win 8.5 percent of the vote.

“Samopomich has gotten a lot stronger recently. And they have grown because some of the voters who supported Civic Position decided to support Samopomich because they will get in[to parlaiment],” said Bekeshkina. 

Civic Position’s party list combines old and new with former Ukrainian Defense Minister Anatoliy Hrytsenko heading the list and joined by Ukrainian reform activists like Shabunin. 

Shabunin says that their party’s ranks are full of activists and journalists who have already proven what they can achieve, but what really sets them apart from Samopomich is their expertise in areas of security and defense. 

In addition to serving as defense minister from 2005-2007 Hrytsenko is a fluent English speaker who completed a residency at United States Air Force’s Air University.

But some experts see Hrytsenko as a liability and connection to the corrupt way of doing things particularly at a time when corruption and inefficiency in the Defense Ministry has been in the spotlight. 

“There are a lot of questions there simply aren’t answers to. For example where he got the money for his campaign from. There are a tremendous number of billboards across the country and they say it is all activists but not possible,”  said Taras Berezovets.

There are also concerns that Civic Position could be a so-called spoiler party, not meant to win or enter parliament but take away votes from similar parties. 

But Bekeshkina insists that Civic Position could still make it into parliament and even play a key  role in forming a coalition after the election given the similarity of their platform to those of larger parties. 

President Petro Poroshenko’s bloc has consistently been projected to be the largest party in the new parliament but it is unclear whether it would win an absolute majority or would have to seek coalition partners.