As if we didn't have enough on our plates already, Ukraine 2008 (again!)

[Harry Hayfield]

President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine has dissolved parliament weeks after the collapse of the country's ruling pro-Western coalition. Mr Yushchenko announced Ukraine's third general election in less than three years in a pre-recorded speech on TV. The polls will be held on 7 December.

General Election 2007
Party of the Regions 34% winning 175 seats
Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc 31% winning 156 seats
Our Ukraine–People's Self-Defense Bloc 14% winning 72 seats
Communists 5% winning 27 seats
Lytvyn Bloc 4% winning 20 seats
All other parties below 3% 7% winning 0 seats

Composition of Parliament
Government: Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (156) Our Ukraine (72)
Opposition: Party of Regions (175) Communists (27) Lytvyn (20)
Government majority of 6

[GMantis]

If latest polls are to be believed, Yushchenko's party might not be able to pass the 5% barrier.

[Hash]

If latest polls are to be believed, Yushchenko's party might not be able to pass the 5% barrier.

Yes. I'm expecting a thumping for Our Ukraine.

[big bad fab]

For international security, it would be better if one party manages to grasp a strong majority.

Very unlikely, but, now, all this mess bring me to think even a win by a pro-Russia coalition would be better.....

Too bad.....

The EU has tangled itself in the Turkish problem while the Ukraine will become the first security matter for Europe in the coming years.
But, of course, let's continue to be blind and to buy Russian gas and oil (thank you Chirac, Schröder and Berlusconi)..... Really too bad.....

[Kevinstat]

My parents and I hosted an exchange student, Igor (whose father's name is Igor too, so his middle name is Igorivich), from L'viv, Ukraine for the 1996-97 school year.  We still keep in touch with him and my parents have gone there three times (I went the second time in 2004 during their Presidential election campaign; ours too).  His whole family was proof that people from outside America could be pro-U.S. but anti-Bush.  Igor (and I imagine most of his family) supported Yushenko in that election, although Igor had voted for Kuchma in 2000.  He's now very discouraged about Ukrainian politics, complaning that everybody is fueding and nothing is getting done.  I proposed to him the idea about replacing Ukraine's proportional system with single-member districts like we have in America (and like Ukraine used in 1990 and 1994 and for half its seats in 1998 and 2002, I forgot to mention), but he said that there would be a monopoly of power in that case.  Absent such a change in the voting system, I think a Party of Regions/Communist or just Party of Regions majority in Parliament and a Party of Regions President is the only realistic way for the gridlock to end.  The Orange politicians are two divided to govern effectively, it seems, although if Our Ukraine supporters defected en masse to Timoshenko's bloc (without a disproportionate percentage of 2007 supporters of the two main orange parties staying home or voting for parties that don't pass the 3% threshold, which I think is likely - the staying home part at least), that block could rival the Party of Regions in size and be in position to credibly contest the 2010 Presidential election and become along with POR a party which can occasinally govern on its own or with a much smaller, not very obtrusive coalition partner.  I hope that happens as I would prefer an Orange-dominated government to an arguably Putinist-dominated government.  But somethings gotta give, it seems.

[Kevinstat]

bump

Do people think Ukraine will ever have two dominant parties able to govern on their own or with a German-level partner (of course that's not working with Germany low with Der Linke in the mix) under the current proportional system?  Could Ukraine have such a party system under the half FPTP, half proportional system it used in 1998 and 2002 (with the same 4% threshold it used in those two elections for the proportional seats, or perhaps a 5% threshold, instead of the current 3%)?

What if all of members of the Verkhovna Rada were elected from single-member districts using the same First Past the Post (or plurality) method used for the national legislatures in the United States, Canada and the U.K.?  Would a two-party system with the Party of Regions or a larger successor on the one side and an "Orange" party on the other eventually develop?  Or would there be a conservative Orange party like the People's Movement of Ukraine or "Rukh", which has been part of the various "Our Ukraine" blocs since 2002, that held some strongholds in L'viv Oblast and in the Carpathians and was the main opposition (and a credible one) to a larger, Yulia Tymoshenko bloc-type party in much of western and perhaps parts of central Ukraine?  Would the Communists be competitive in some districts in the Party of Region's current general area of dominance, benefiting from a natural inclination for political cleavages to emerge in areas where the Orange parties have very little support (in some state House districts in the Portland Penninsula in Maine the Greens regularly come in second, and they held a seat from 2002 to 2006) just like a Rukh-type party could benefit from that in western Ukraine?  Or have eastern and southern Ukraine been so thoroughly Putinized that that natural inclination wouldn't exist in a single-member district system and you'd have a huge belt of constituencies where the Party of Regions or a successor party to it got over 70% of the vote?