Continuing our series of election reports, the following post-election report on Ukraine’s 2012 parliamentary election is provided by frequent Monkey Cage contributor University of Toronto political scientist Lucan Way.
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Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Ukraine provide a revealing look into the developing characteristics of authoritarianism in Yanukovych’s Ukraine. They suggest that while the regime has become much more authoritarian in recent years, important arenas of contestation remain. Thus far, Ukraine is still a competitive authoritarian rather than fully authoritarian regime.
Since coming to power in 2010 in a hotly contested Presidential election, Yanukovych has concentrated control at a dizzying speed. By the end of his first year, he had reversed political reforms passed during the Orange revolution that had significantly weakened the Presidency. In problematic local elections in late October, his Party of Regions gained majorities in cities and provinces throughout east, central, and southern Ukraine. Most critically, Yanukovych has jailed two key leaders of the Orange Revolution, Yuri Lutsenko and Yulia Tymoshenko. Tymoshenko, who barely lost to Yanukovych in 2010, was sentenced in late 2011 to seven years in jail for “abuse of office” during her tenure as Prime Minister. Similarly, Lutsenko, who led protests against the Kuchma regime in 2001 and 2004, has been jailed for four years on charges of embezzlement. Such blatantly political prosecutions have garnered widespread criticism of the Yanukovych regime by US and EU authorities. Not even former President Leonid Kuchma jailed opposition for extended periods of time.
Given so much authoritarian backsliding over the last two years, we might have expected the most recent parliamentary elections to be especially dirty. Indeed, the elections demonstrated that the Party of Regions have created a highly uneven playing field. The ruling party’s overwhelming access to patronage resources and informal control over the Central Election Commission – among other advantages – has created highly uneven conditions for the opposition in Ukraine. And, most notably, Lutsenko and Tymoshenko were deprived of the right to participate. Ukraine is clearly not a democracy.
Yet, outright fraud and media abuse appears to have been surprisingly limited. While state TV displayed a “clear bias in favor of the ruling party,” the much more popular private stations – Inter, 1+1, and ICTV provided “balanced” coverage of the competing parties. (These three stations account for about a third of TV viewers in Ukraine, while state TV, UT1, accounts for 3-4 percent. The private pro Yanukovych “Ukraine” channel accounts for about 5 percent). Serious problems with Ukrainian media remain. Corruption is rife, major outlets lack editorial autonomy and coverage of the campaign was mostly limited. As a result, parties had to rely on paid advertising and thus required significant resources to compete. Nonetheless in Yanukovych’s Ukraine, opposition parties so far have significant access to major media outlets. The situation is a far cry from 2004 when most outlets were “overwhelmingly” imbalanced in favor of Yanukovych.
Simultaneously, the evidence so far suggests that outright vote stealing was also relatively limited in this election. Thus, the proportional vote – which gave the Party of Regions about thirty percent of the vote; and Tymoshenko’s Fatherland Party a quarter – was directly in line with exit polls. The next few days will almost certainly reveal more evidence of fraud in the single member districts, where the ruling party has done much better (and which account for half of the legislature). However, most estimates at the time of writing (October 30) suggest that overall the Party of Regions will have direct control over about 40 percent of the legislature – high by Ukrainian standards, but low compared to Russia and other semi authoritarian countries. Even accounting for the fact that the government – with its vast resources – will certainly be able to bribe its way to a majority, the Party of Regions is unlikely to be able to gain a constitutional majority.
In sum, Yanukovych has concentrated power in Ukraine and destroyed the democratic legacy of the Orange revolution with remarkable ease. Yet, the most recent vote suggests that elections still allow for meaningful – if highly unfair – competition. Ukraine is a hybrid or competitive authoritarian regime. Yanukovych is no Putin or Lukashenka. Such silver linings are worth noting. They may disappear…