The parliamentary elections in Ukraine once more confirm the statements made by political scientists and sociologists, that the electoral sentiments and political preferences of the voters have divided the country. Ukraine’s western regions, which almost unanimously voted for Viktor Yushchenko over a year ago, this time have also voted for the “orange” blocs. The eastern and southern regions, which supported Viktor Yanukovych at the presidential elections in 2004, again voted for the Party of Regions headed by the same Yanukovych.

Right after the parliamentary elections, the politicians, who got into the Verkhovna Rada, are going to carry out political haggles. And now people, who are involved in politics, think about configuration of the future parliamentary majority. If to take into account the results of the elections and the statements made by the political forces, there are only two options: either Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc, Our Ukraine Bloc and the Socialist Party of Ukraine will create the coalition and form the “orange-ruby” majority in the Verkhovna Rada, or Our Ukraine Bloc and the Party of Regions will have to come to terms. Though, neither the first nor the second option guarantees that the new coalition will exist happily ever after; they are fraught with the threat of breakdown due to economic, political and even personality differences within the coalition. For example, the instability may be provoked by the attempt made by the president or propresidential political forces to pull back the constitutional reform, which will come into force when the new Verkhovna Rada gets its powers.

True, it was supposed that together with the constitutional reform, which redistributes the presidential authorities in favor of the parliament and the cabinet, the constitutional amendments, concerning the reform of the local government system, will come into force. However, since the Constitutional Court is short-staffed, the appropriate bill, approved by the parliament, has never received the conclusion about its relevance to the Constitution, which prevented it from being submitted for the decisive consideration by the Verkhovna Rada.

During the presidential and parliamentary elections, every politician showed such support for decentralization of power and promised to confer wider authorities to the local governments to such a considerable degree that now they cannot feign that nothing was said. What’s more to that, the wider authorities will be fought for both by the opposition and the pro-government regional elites. The local government reform implies handing over the majority of authorities from the existing state administrations, whose heads are appointed by the president, to the executive committees of the appropriate district and region councils (the district state administrations would be eliminated altogether, while the regional administrations would be keep basically for control functions). It comes natural that first of all, it concerns formation and execution of the local budgets, which are passed from the state administrations to the council executive committees, and expansion of the economic potential connected with that.

There is no doubt that expansion of the regions’ economic freedom will stimulate them to make their autonomous political processes more intense. The political life in the regions will not be directly correlated with the results of the attempts to create the coalition made in Kyiv, because the local counsels, unlike the parliament, will have one color (maybe, with several exceptions), either “orange” or “white-blue”.

So, on the one hand, the regional elites, which are represented in the bodies of local government, will demand wider powers.

At the same time, further weakening of the president’s position, who has already lost some authorities due to the constitutional reform, against a background of strengthening politically monolithic regions, may result in more conflicts between Kyiv and the regions as well as stronger mutual rejection between antagonizing regions.

It seems to be the case when there is too much democracy.

Ivan Gayvanovych is a Ukrainian journalist, laureate of the competitions “MAS MEDIA – for civil society», «Golden Era of the Ukrainian TV”.

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