Political Parties or Political Spam? Instructions for Change

The current parliament will remain in office until the war is over. Its non-agency is obvious. And the reason is not only, let's say, the leadership qualities of the current president. It is also due to the complete lack of them among the parliamentarians who make up the ruling majority. In Ukraine, a one-day party (without ideology, quality personnel, or any responsibility for its actions) can easily come to power, and we are now dealing with the consequences of its rule.

However, the issue is not only with the Servant of the People party, which rests solely on the shoulders of its leader, being essentially a pocket party and giving rise to a pocket government, but also the system and legislative framework that has prevented us from structuring the political field in a qualitative way for more than 30 years.

But let’s tell everything in order.

What are Ukrainian parties and what is wrong with them?

Ukraine is a parliamentary-presidential republic. According to Article 71 of the Constitution of Ukraine, “Elections to state authorities and local self-government bodies shall be free and shall be held on the basis of universal, equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot.”

According to the Electoral Code of Ukraine (hereinafter the Code), only political parties can nominate candidates for people's deputies. Article 154 of the Code states: “A party may nominate as a candidate for deputy a person who is a member of that party or a non-party person (in my opinion, this is a contradictory provision, because what does a non-party person have to do with the party, and what responsibility will he or she and the party bear? – note is mine, P.D.), who in accordance with article 134 of the Code has the right to be elected. A member of the CEC has the right to be present at a party congress (meeting, conference) to nominate candidates for people’s deputies upon instructions from the chairman of the Central Election Commission. Why is this not an obligation?

According to the information on duly registered political parties, as of January 1, 2024, there are no less than 377 parties and political projects in Ukraine. The largest number of so-called parties was registered in 2016 — 42.

However, among such a variety of so-called political parties, according to the information published in ZN.UA, 222 political parties did not submit reports on property, income, expenses and financial liabilities for the fourth quarter of 2023 or for 2023, as stated by the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption. The question arises: do these 222 political parties actually exist?

According to Article 2 of the Law of Ukraine “On Political Parties in Ukraine” (hereinafter the Law), a political party is a voluntary association of citizens registered in accordance with the law who support a certain national program of social development, which aims to promote the formation and expression of the political will of citizens, and participates in elections and other political events.

A citizen of Ukraine can be a member of only one political party at a time, but I wonder who controls this and how? In my opinion, this is a completely empty phrase in the Law — a rule about nothing!

The procedure for joining a political party, suspension and termination of membership in it is determined by the charter of the political party. A citizen of Ukraine has the right to suspend or terminate his/her membership in a political party at any time by submitting an application to its respective statutory bodies. Membership in a political party is suspended or terminated from the date of submission of such an application and does not require additional decisions. From the same day, a citizen of Ukraine ceases to hold any elected office in a political party. Again, the question is: who controls this?

Membership in a political party is fixed. A prerequisite for fixing membership in a political party is an application of a citizen of Ukraine submitted to its statutory body, stating his/her desire to become a member of this party. No one knows whether such an application exists or not! And the number of political parties is a secret behind seven locks.

The decision to establish a political party is made at its constituent congress (conference, meeting). This decision must be supported by the signatures of at least 10,000 Ukrainian citizens who, in accordance with the Constitution of Ukraine, have the right to vote in elections, collected in at least two-thirds of the districts of at least two-thirds of the regions of Ukraine, the cities of Kyiv and Sevastopol, and at least two-thirds of the districts of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. Again, a huge field for manipulation! Those 10,000 full-time citizens of Ukraine can sign up for the creation of more than one hundred such parties, not for free, of course. After all, there are no restrictions.

At the constituent congress (conference, meeting) of a political party, the party's charter and program are approved, and its governing and control and audit bodies are elected. A political party is established by a group of Ukrainian citizens consisting of at least 100 persons (citizens or passports and tax identification numbers?). For some reason, the Law does not require mandatory participation of representatives of the Ministry of Justice and the Central Election Commission in the constituent congress (conference, meeting), since a new subject of electoral law is being created. During the election of local council deputies, such a requirement for the presence of a member of the territorial election commission is mandatory!

An integral part of the minutes is a register of persons who participated in the constituent congress (conference, meeting) of a political party. The register contains the data of the participants of such a meeting: surname, name and patronymic, passport details, and taxpayer identification number.

Who exercises state control over the activities of political parties and how?

1. The Ministry of Justice of Ukraine.
2. The Central Election Commission, district election commissions, and territorial election commissions for the relevant local elections.
3. The Accounting Chamber, for the targeted use of funds allocated from the state budget to finance their statutory activities.
4. The National Agency for Corruption Prevention.

In my opinion, only the NACP fulfills its duties to some extent, and the CEC partially, but only during elections.

If a political party fails to comply with the requirements of part seven of Article 11 of the Law “On Political Parties in Ukraine,” i.e. if inaccurate information is found in the documents submitted for registration within three years from the date of registration of the political party, if the political party does not nominate its candidates for the presidential and parliamentary elections within ten years, the body that registered the political party must apply to the court for revocation of the registration certificate. There are no other grounds for revocation of the registration certificate.

In my opinion, such a criterion for assessing the party's activities as nominating its candidates for the presidential and parliamentary elections once every ten years is insufficient. That is, the party has been inactive for ten years! What about the party's program and charter? What about congresses, conferences, meetings, reports, elections, re-elections of the party's governing bodies, etc.?

If the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine were to fulfill its duties properly, political projects or fake parties would not appear on the list of political parties, and the number of registered parties would be reduced by more than a dozen.

There are 37 registered parties in Ukraine, including parties named after collaborators and pro-Russian politicians — Sharii, Palchevskyi, Saldo — and the Ministry of Justice is silent.

Even more interesting is the information about the leadership parties of the late owners and “immortal” chairmen:

• political party “Unity of Oleksandr Omelchenko,” headed by Oleksandr Omelchenko;
• political Party of Defenders of the Fatherland, headed by Yurii Karmazin.

There are also permanent heads of political parties in exile:

• political party All-Ukrainian Union “Hromada,” headed by Pavlo Lazarenko;
• Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine (in the process of termination), led by Nataliia Vitrenko.

There are parties that do not have leaders and are listed in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, Individual Entrepreneurs and Public Organizations or the Unified Register of Public Organizations (six of them).

The reputational institution of parties in Ukraine is absent altogether. There is a struggle for a more attractive and seductive party name for voters, for resources and access to TV. A striking example is the Servant of the People “party,” which was registered only in 2016, and by 2019, it had already gained everything possible. Parties are traded like pies at a market. I heard about one case at the “bazaar” when a well-known oligarch wanted to buy a party and offered its leadership $500,000. This situation with political parties and political projects, especially during elections, is reminiscent of Popandopulo’s phrase from the Soviet film Wedding in Malinovka: “Take 100 million dollars! Listen, take it all, I'll draw more for myself!”

What needs to be changed in the legislation?

Thus, it is long overdue to amend the Law “On Political Parties in Ukraine” accordingly.

First, create a publicly accessible electronic register of members of all political parties. The registry should provide for the impossibility of simultaneous membership in several political parties. In addition, the registry should contain information on past memberships of at least representatives of the party's governing body and heads of regional party branches. This register will make it clear to everyone who is who. And there will not be a situation where Lavrynovych was the deputy head of the People's Movement of Ukraine, but when he sold himself out to the authorities, he said that he had not written any application for membership in the Movement (literally):

“No one really knows whether you left the Movement or not.”

“I never wrote a statement of withdrawal from the Movement, just as I never wrote a statement of membership. Because there was no one to submit this application. When the organization was just being created, I was (among other things) responsible for collecting applications for joining the Movement. I couldn't have written it myself, could I?”

“So you have never formally been a member of the Movement?”

Secondly, it is necessary to establish restrictions for political parties depending on the total number of registered party members who can nominate candidates in national elections, since a party with 3–5 or 10–15 members cannot nominate candidates in the presidential and parliamentary elections, where the number of members of the Verkhovna Rada is 450. This will make it impossible for the so-called electoral party spam.

Third, the decision to establish a political party is made at its constituent congress (conference, meeting). This decision must be supported by signatures in an electronic register of at least 4,500 Ukrainian citizens who, according to the Constitution of Ukraine, have the right to vote in elections. Citizens should have the right to support only one political party during a certain period.

Fourth, in addition to the failure of a political party to nominate its candidates for the presidential and parliamentary elections in Ukraine for ten years, the grounds for going to court to cancel the registration certificate should be the inactivity of the political party, namely failure to comply with the requirements of the charter (absence of governing bodies for a certain period, failure to hold congresses, conferences, meetings, etc.)

Fifth, the Law should provide for the responsibility of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine for inaction in taking appropriate measures to revoke the registration certificate of a party in case it is established that a political party has failed to comply with the requirements of part seven of Article 11 of this Law.