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DEMOCRACY IN UKRAINE
Four more student questions
Queston: Hello my name is Giovanni Benion. I am a student at Watchcare Academy in
Denver. I would like to ask you a few questions about the elections taking
place in Ukraine. My questions are:
- What is the voting age in Ukraine?
- Who makes the laws in Ukraine?
- Is there a house of representitives in the Ukrainian Parliment?
Sincerely,
Giovanni Benion
Grade 6
Giovanni: Thank you for your fine questions. The voting age in Ukraine is 18. The national laws in Ukraine are made by Ukraine's parliament called the Verkhovna Rada. Ukraine has a national judicial system not too unlike ours in the U.S.
The Verkhovna Rada is unicameral, meaning there is only one house. In the USA, Representatives and Senators are called Congressmen or Members of Congress. In Ukraine, members of Parliament are called Deputies.
Question: Hello, my name is Terrance King. I am a student at Watchcare Academy in
Denver. I would like to ask you a few questions about the elections taking
place in Ukarine. My questions are:
- Who is running for President in Ukraine and What are there colors?
- How old do you need to be to run for president in Ukrine?
- How long do you have to live in Ukarine before you can run for president?
Sincerely,
Terrance King
8th Grade
Terrance, you asked some tough questions. I had to get a Ukrainian election law book out to find the answers.
Your first question though isn't the hard one. Nobody is running for president in Ukraine right now. The election that I'm here observing is for members of the Ukrainian Parliament and for oblast (kind of like a U.S. state) leaders and local officials. Actually, Ukrainian voters will be receiving several ballots when they show up to vote. My main purpose in being here is to focus on the national elections and document whether the election procedures seem to comply with Ukraine's election law.
Your question is still relevant, however. Even though the election will not determine who the president will be, the current president, Viktor Yushchenko and his past rival Victor Yanukovych are very involved in the election. Both men are leaders in their political parties and they are working very hard to help members of their teams win. It is kind of like in the United States. When the president is not running for re-election himself (which is the case for the current year), he gets out and helps other members of his party get elected during the off-year elections.
Under the law, any Ukrainian citizen age 35 or over (as of election day) who is eligible to vote, has been living in Ukraine for the 10 years prior to the election and speaks Ukrainian, the state language, is eligible to be elected president.
I think that answers your third question, too. Thanks for posting them. Good job!
Question: Hello, my name is Kurnesha Hawkins. I am a student at Watchcare Academy in Denver. I would like to ask you a few questions about the elections taking place in Ukraine.
My questions are:
- What is the process of the election?
- What are the new parliamentary powers?
- Why did parliament sack Yekhanurovs cabinet?
- Would Hike in Russian gas prices prove a blessing in disguise?
Sincerely,
Kurnesha Hawkins
Grade 7
Kurnesha: You asked some questions that are answered differently depending on who you ask — and I've shared your questions with a few of the people who work here in Ukraine and who closely observe Ukrainian politics.
1. The election process for the Parliamentary election first involves political parties getting properly certified to run campaigns. This basically requires money including a cash deposit. Older, more established parties have an easier time getting qualified to field candidates than new ones with no previous record. There are quite a lot of parties in Ukraine.
Next the parties make lists of their members they want to serve in Parliament. Then the parties go out and try to get as many Ukrainians to vote for their party as they can. It is interesting that the candidates do not run as individuals in Ukraine's parliamentary system. Voters instead vote for a party. The more votes a party gets, the more people from their list make it into the Parliament.
2. The new parliamentary powers you mentioned involved a series of detailed proposals that are essentially designed to give more authority to Ukraine's Parliament (called the Verkhovna Rada) to make administrative decisions. These powers will give the Rada more to say about who is the Prime Minister of Ukraine than in the past. For the past fifteen years, that decision has been mostly in the hands of the Ukrainian President, although the Rada's role is still quite significant.
The relationship between the Verkhovna Rada and President Yushchenko has deteriorated over the past year or so. There are many reasons for this, again, depending on whom you ask. Each reason boils down to politics. President Yuschenko had political opponents when he became president. Remember, it took a revolution to bring him to power and that means he had opponents on his first day as president. Months later, he made some agreements with his former opponents.
Many of his supporters didn't like this. Some of these people abandoned him. So, as you can see, and without getting into more specific details, being president in Ukraine is pretty difficult. When members of the Verkhovna Rada disagree with the direction the president is leading, one thing they can do is remove some of the top officials in the government. That is what has happened in some cases in Ukraine.
Gas prices are playing a very important role in this election. Ukrainians have enjoyed low gas prices for many years. The prices are low because the Russians who sell the gas do not charge Ukraine the full price. Sometimes, when Ukraine gets ready to make a political decision the Russians don't like, the Russians threaten to raise the gas prices. This usually occurs as winter approaches.
These kinds of conflicts have a direct bearing on Ukrainian politics. Ukraine is not exactly a wealthy country. There are many poor people here. When gas prices go up, the government and the people have to make difficult choices about their spending.
I think, however, that your instincts are right that there is an upside to paying market prices. Getting to market prices probably could be phased in, in order to avoid the shock of dramatic price swings. There are few countries in the world that pay such low prices for energy as Ukraine.
Most of the rest of us pay market prices. Doing so in Ukraine would have two positive effects. First, it would stimulate Ukraine's own energy production and remove some of the economic leverage Russia has over Ukraine. Ukraine probably has the potential of developing a domestic oil and gas supply of its own, but it has counterproductive laws in place that make it expensive and risky to get it out of the ground.
Secondly, paying market prices would motivate Ukrainians to stop wasting as much energy as they do today. It gets bitterly cold here in the winter yet most Ukrainian buildings do not have double-pane windows or modern insulation.
In many buildings here, people regulate the room temperature by opening the windows in the dead of winter. No kidding. You can walk down the streets of Kyiv in -20 degree weather and see open windows all over the place.
I think this is partly because energy prices are artificially cheap. Once people know the real cost of energy, perhaps they'll not waste so much of it.
What an astute set of questions, Kurnesha. I think you should go into the foreign service or become an economist — or both. Superb job!
Question: Hello, my name is Deidra Howard. I am a student at Watchcare Academy in
Denver. I would like to ask you a few questions about the elections taking place in Ukraine. My questions are:
- How long is one allowed to be president?
- How many times can one run for president?
Sincerely,
Deidra Howard
Hello Deidra: Thanks for your interest in Ukraine and for your splendid questions.
Here are the answers: In Ukraine, the president is elected by popular vote for a five-year term. A person is permitted to be president of Ukraine for two terms.
Again, thanks. I enjoyed meeting you when we had lunch together last year at the Oxford Hotel. I remember you and the other WatchCare kids came to visit with some of us in the oil & gas business.
Former U.S. Congressman Bob Schaffer, a member of the Colorado State Board of Education, is an election observer for the Parliamentary elections in Ukraine. The election is coming up this Sunday, March 26.
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