Is a single party needed?

Prospects of a single party

To begin with, let us try to analyze what is the reason for the success of the "Our Ukraine" bloc. And in general, what is "Our Ukraine" in its essence? What role does this association play in Ukrainian society?

At the moment, "Our Ukraine" is a bloc that already today exercises ideological and political hegemony over broad strata and various political and social groups of Ukrainian society. The strength of the bloc lies in the fact that it is not simply a mechanical association of several parties, but an entire ideological current that draws into its orbit all more or less organically similar and neutral structures.

Its strength lies in the fact that it has occupied the entire spiritual space open to democratic influence, and not simply the right political flank.

For example, today this current encompasses even the Socialist Party (regardless of whether the leaders of the SPU like this or not). The fluctuations in the behavior of Moroz and the SPU leadership are explained by the fact that they understand that the SPU is becoming a satellite of Yushchenko's bloc. Let no one be misled by the "leftism" of the SPU and the word "socialist" in its name.

In reality, the affinity of political forces among themselves is determined not by the color of the flag, but by what lies at its deep foundation, from where it draws its strength and recruits its cadre composition. If such an analysis is made, we will see that, say, between the CPU and the SPU there lies an abyss, which, however, does not exist between the SPU and "Our Ukraine."

The strata of the population on which the left-centrists rely have already fallen under the spiritual influence of the current headed by Viktor Yushchenko. After the bloc is formalized into a single party, this will become impossible. But we are talking about a multitude of such examples, not only about the Socialist Party.

The creation of one single party will become a genuine catastrophe for the democratic movement, will become a huge step backward relative to what has previously been achieved. This will mean a sharp narrowing of the ideological and energetic field of "Our Ukraine."

Today, various subjects of the country's public life are present in this field. Many of them work in favor of the democratic bloc, even without fully realizing it, but simply performing the functions inherent to them.

This especially applies to various independent media, representatives of the creative intelligentsia, youth organizations, and so on. For many of these structures, there is a difference — whether to be an organic independent part of a broad democratic movement, or to deal with a specific party and with the narrowly pragmatic interests of its party bureaucracy, to serve these interests.

However, this is precisely what will happen in the event of the implementation of the idea of creating a single party. Summing up all of the above, the following risks can be stated:

1. Already today, the threatening tendency of the future single party turning into a party of a new "democratic" nomenklatura is obvious. A sort of new "Za Yedu!" [For United!], since due to serious, sometimes even incompatible ideological differences between the possible participants of the new party, it will not be able to become a serious ideological project, but will turn into an amorphous association that will be torn apart by contradictions and held together only by current mercantile interests.

2. The narrowing of the bloc's format to an ordinary party, which in any case will be forced to gravitate toward some single ideology, will expose the political space, especially on the right and right-center flank, and will open opportunities for active activity in this field by uncontrolled forces. Possibly even openly hostile ones. For example, something analogous to how an oligarchic grouping already today exploits the brand of social democracy. The purposeful creation of subversive technological projects is also possible.

3. There will be an inevitable conflict of interests of various elite groups that are part of the bloc today, up to a split and the beginning of destructive processes that will be consonant with the processes described in the previous points.

4. All of the above as a whole will lead to "Our Ukraine" losing its spiritual authority in society and its central place in its political life.

What is the alternative?

Changes, however, are needed. It is necessary to give the unification process a qualitatively new impulse and at the same time direct it into a channel that allows avoiding many negative reactions that will inevitably arise in the event of the implementation of the proposal to unite the members of the bloc into one party. It is necessary to find a solution that will allow the bloc not only to be today the leading force in the political life of Ukraine, but also to remain so in the long term.

Such a solution could be:

I. Abandoning the idea of a single party and creating, on the basis of the bloc under the aegis of Viktor Yushchenko, four powerful ideological parties, such as a united party of the liberal direction, a party of the national-conservative (nationalist) direction, a union of Christian democrats, a party of the broad general-democratic direction (possibly with elements of social democracy).

II. Preserving "Our Ukraine" in the format of a bloc of these four political parties.

The advantages of such a variant (the creation of several strong parties) are obvious:

First, the threat of conflict between the members of the bloc is maximally reduced, and the interests of all sides are taken into account. Second, the bloc in the renewed format is preserved and receives a new energetic impulse thanks to strong ideological parties united under the aegis of Viktor Yushchenko.

The bloc can become an association of the entire democratic spectrum — from liberalism to social democracy.

And finally, the democratic bloc will become the author of several promising ideological projects which, competing among themselves, will, however, have a common spiritual and even organizational headquarters in the near future.

These ideological projects can all together become the basis of a new flexible and stable political system of Ukraine. Moreover, the place of the fourth proposed party (with elements of social democracy) can quite well be taken by today's Socialist Party of Ukraine.

In the other case, one of the projects will prove its exceptional advantage, and it will become the indisputable basis for the creation of a genuine super-party, without the negative aspects noted above.

The main problem

The main problem in implementing such a variant of the transformation of Viktor Yushchenko's bloc may become the position of the bloc's central headquarters itself.

On the one hand, the creation of a single party is seen by many as the simplest way to consolidate the established distribution of roles in the bloc and to make the processes occurring within it more controllable. At the same time as the creation of genuinely strong parties may cause apprehension about dealing with self-sufficient, independent structures and, as a consequence, the need to change the style of leadership of the bloc.

It is understandable that managing the weak and dependent is much easier than managing the strong and independent.

On the other hand, within the bloc among the party leaders themselves there are quite a few people who know perfectly well the real state of affairs within the structures of their parties, which were in fact neglected and did not develop. To such leaders, the creation of a single party seems the only chance to obtain a deputy mandate in 2006 and in this way to prolong their political existence.

Therefore, everything depends on the ability of the leaders of "Our Ukraine" to think on a large scale and the ability to resist the temptation of simple solutions.

Here the shortcomings of the unification process are listed in the form in which it is being discussed today from the point of view of both the current political moment and strategic prospects. The adoption of a decision to unite the bloc into a single party could become a serious political mistake with far-reaching consequences.

And conversely, the reformatting of the bloc in the proposed way can transfer this process into a new promising channel, remove the tension between partners that no one needs, give the democratic camp a new impulse and create a new political system of Ukraine open to all healthy forces.

Dmytro Panko, Institute of Christian Democracy