In Ukraine, the right to form political parties is recognized as the basic freedom of modern democracies. In recent decades, political parties in Ukraine used to possess a low level of public trust. This thesis is confirmed by a number of sociological surveys. A recent public opinion poll held by the Razumkov Centre shows that 73.2% of citizens do not trust political parties. According to a survey by the National Democratic Institute (hereinafter – NDI), 33% of citizens do not have a positive attitude towards any of the political parties. That is why the working group of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on drafting the Law on Political Parties holds public consultations with the participation of responsible politicians, public activists, scholars, lawyers and other experts. The new Law should promote the evolution of political institutions in Ukraine and create a field for quality partnership, cooperation between citizens and political parties, thus resulting in an increased level of trust to parties.

All the consultations were held on ZOOM platform, involved the concerned persons and covered all the regions of Ukraine:

On December 7th: the target regions were Zakarpattia, Chernivtsi, Volyn, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil, Lviv regions. On December 9th: the target regions were Rivne, Zhytomyr, Kyiv, Sumy, Chernihiv regions. On December 10th: the target regions were Cherkasy, Kirovohrad, Vinnytsia, Khmelnytskyi, Poltava regions. On December 21st: the target regions were Odesa, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk regions. On December 23rd: the target regions were Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv regions.

The events afforded the facility for:

  • the concept of the Draft Law to be presented;
  • the work of the consultation’s participants to be organized in groups in order to discuss the issues submitted for public consultation;
  • the results of the group work to be presented and discussed;

The participants and experts considered the following issues:

  • inner-party democracy;
  • the role and status of political parties;
  • financing the activities of political parties.

Oleksandra Hlizhynska, the Executive Director of the Institute “Respublica” and a co-founder of the All-Ukrainian Initiative “Active Community”, noted that the purpose of the public consultations was to create the facility for exchanging ideas between representatives of various political parties, public and scientific circles with regard to drafting a new version of the Law on Political Parties. This will contribute to the formation of accountable, inclusive and representative political institutions in Ukraine.

Viktoriia Podhorna, the Chairperson of the Sub-committee on Electronic Democracy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Committee on Digital Transformation, stressed that “a significant part of our legislation was outdated”.

“While working with the public, we found out that people distrusted political parties. There is no main part in the Law providing for the regulation of inner-party activities of political parties. Moreover, political parties have a very low level of influence on the country’s development. We see a very low level of trust (6%) in political parties by citizens, which is primarily caused by corruption. Another reason is that parties, in drafting their programmes, take the public needs and proposals into account only to a limited extent. It is important that parties were interested in cooperating with voters not only during the election process but on a constant basis. The key goal is to draft the Law focusing on public interest. It is important to find a public compromise so that this document reflected the public needs,” Viktoriia Podhorna noted.

Julia Kyrychenko, a Member of the Board of Centre of Policy and Legal Reform (CPLR), noted that “our country is unitary and we strived to ensure that all parties had an all-Ukrainian status”.

“In practice, this is not always the case. The procedure for registration of a party is expensive, but it is clearly defined. We have a market of parties, a party is an object of purchase and sale, which is unnatural and should not be so,” Julia Kyrychenko believes.

According to Julia, the drafting of a new Law “On Political Parties” will make it possible to fulfil the nature of political parties, reduce the unnatural market of parties, reduce the participation of “stalking-horse” political parties.

The expert singles out the following drawbacks in the current legislation:

  • the need for 10,000 signatures;
  • formal all-Ukrainian status;
  • participation of “stalking-horse” political parties;
  • costly and complex registration procedure;
  • party owners are people with strong financial resources.

Among the other problems, one can distinguish the influence of the aggressor state on the political activities of the parties.

  • the aggressor state influences the parties and their individual members;
  • the aggressor state weakens Ukraine from within;
  • the law enforcement bodies do not react to the anti-state activities of parties;
  • there is no provision for the prohibition of specific parties for anti-state activities through court action.

Proposals to the new Draft Law:

“Contacts with parties and organizations that have relations with the aggressor state shall be forbidden. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, upon submission by the Security Service of Ukraine, shall publish the list of parties and organizations of the aggressor state the contacts with which are forbidden. We expect that this would make it more difficult for Russia to interfere with the political situation in Ukraine,” Julia Kyrychenko says.

Denis Hartwig, an expert with the CPLR, stressed the following problems of the current legislation:

  • unethical behaviour of party members;
  • vertical hierarchical structure;
  • absence of social mobility;
  • undemocratic procedures for admission to party membership or its revoking;
  • decisions are taken by party leadership or by the leader alone;

The proposals are the following:

To establish a Code of Ethics that would determine the “red lines” for parties. It should also set the standards for communication with political opponents, donors and party supporters.

A party’s Code of Ethics should reflect the system of values ​​and moral and ethical relations among party members, establish ethical norms of behaviour and standard public behaviour of party members and define behaviour that is incompatible with the status of a party member.

A Code of Ethics:

  • shall be adopted no later than in 1 year from the date of the state registration of a party;
  • may encourage party members for actions that have contributed to the development of the party;
  • shall be published on the party’s website.

The expert also suggested a prohibition on the use of names and surnames in a party’s insignia.

The provisions that are proposed for the new Draft Law:

  • a party convention shall be convened at least once a year;
  • chairperson and management bodies shall be re-elected periodically;
  • a party shall establish a disciplinary body;
  • uniform conditions for membership shall be introduced;
  • a register of party members shall be established;
  • an exhaustive list of grounds for expulsion from membership shall be compiled;
  • there shall be a possibility of holding primaries to nominate candidates for elections.

The expected results are the following:

  • the level of moral and ethical behaviour of party members and council members should gradually grow;
  • the role of party members in party building is expected to strengthen;
  • the partisanship of the society should grow;
  • the role of local organizations is expected to strengthen;
  • the democratic procedures for admission and withdrawal should be introduced;
  • the tampering with lists of party members should be prevented.

Yulia Zaltsberg, the Head of the Anti-Corruption Platform Integrity.UA, noted the inefficient system of state control over the financial activities of political parties.

“We suggest that parties presented their reports once every six months. It is important that civil society could know the persons who fund political parties. A party receiving funds on its account should report this within 15 days by filling in online documents on its website,” the expert proposes.

Yulia Zaltsberg noted that in 2020 local elections we actually couldn’t see who had financed the parties.

“We propose to expand the time span for the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) to verify parties’ reports from 60 to 90 days. Yet another problem is that state funding is allowed to be used for the statutory activities – however, there is no clear definition of such a concept in the legislation,” the expert emphasized.

According to her, such a rule creates an uneven playing field for parties.

Additionally, according to Yulia, there is a problem that parties are prohibited to use state funding of the statutory activities for the election-related purposes.

The next problem is that there is no effective mechanism of holding parties accountable for misuse of funds.

The expected results are the following:

  • The NACP should have enough time to verify reports and receipts of donations to parties in a quality manner;
  • Clear and comprehensible rules on the prohibitions of spending the state funding should be established;
  • Parties should be allowed to spend the state funding to achieve one of their main purposes – participation in elections;
  • The NACP should respond effectively to violations of restrictions on the designated use of state funding by parties;
  • The NACP should exercise effective state control.

The dependence of parties on financial and industrial groups

The expert emphasizes the importance of preventing situations where parties are funded by such groups, but the people behind them do not admit this.

Another problem is non-transparent methods of placing funds to party accounts.

“New and young parties are deprived of the opportunity to compete on an equal footing with those parties that have the financial backing by business and oligarchs,” the expert concluded.

During the work in groups, participants had the opportunity to elaborate on the options for the civil society development, express their views on why citizens had such a low level of trust in political parties, how to reduce the influence of the aggressor state on the political situation in Ukraine, and further discuss the proposed solutions.

Based on the results of the series of public consultations, the organizers will draw up an analytical report. The working group of the Verkhovna Rada will take note of the conclusions made as a result of consultations while finalizing the Draft Law.

For reference. The events are held by the working group of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on drafting the Law on Political Parties in partnership with the All-Ukrainian Initiative “Active Community” and the Centre of Policy and Legal Reform in association with the National Democratic Institute and with the support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Note. The All-Ukrainian Initiative “Active Community” is an association of people and social movements for self-organization and participation in solving local problems. The Initiative was created within the framework of the Institute “Respublica” activities.

Authored by Tetiana Kavunenko, the head of the press service of the Institute “Respublica” and the All-Ukrainian Initiative “Active Community”