Results Of Ukraine’s Election ‘A Death Sentence To The Communist Party’ – Poroshenko

[uhnope]

Source: International Business Times Australia

Voters in conflict-riddled Ukraine have spoken. Ballot results have shown the people effectively approved the direction of the country to go out of Russia's hold and into Europe's mainstream.

Mykhaylo Okhendovsky, head of the Ukrainian Central Election Commission, walks past a screen displaying the partial results of the parliamentary election at the commission's headquarters in Kiev October 27, 2014. Pro-Western parties will dominate Ukraine's parliament after an election handed President Petro Poroshenko a mandate to end a separatist conflict and steer the country further out of Russia's orbit into Europe's mainstream. Poroshenko planned to start coalition talks on Monday after exit polls and partial results showed most of the groups that were holding up democratic and legal reforms demanded by the European Union had been swept out of parliament on Sunday. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

The parties in Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's bloc secured the most number of votes at 23 percent. Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk's group, the People's Front, was second with 21 percent. The Samopomich party, also a pro-Europe party, came third with 14 percent of the votes. Despite leading different parties, both Messrs Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk go for a pro-western stance for Ukraine.

Mr Poroshenko, reeling from the successful turnout of the parliamentary elections, said on national television that the sentiments of the people that eventually came through the ballot meant one thing - that they no longer want to be under a regime of communism.

"For that I congratulate you," the Ukrainian leader told his countrymen. "The people's judgment, which is higher than all but the judgment of God, has issued a death sentence to the Communist Party of Ukraine."

Read more: http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/571021/20141028/ukraine-election-communist-party-poroshenko-russia-obama.htm#.VE_ZAGfp_as

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These pro-Russian Communists were like the neocons in the USA (but even worse) so this is good news. Ukrainians have said no to Putin and totalitarians, yes to Europe and democracy.

[The Magistrate]

1. A Decent Result, Sir

Though I would have hoped matter were not nearly so equivalent between Messers. Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk. A replay of the in-fighting and rivalries following 2004 would be unfortunate. It is good that the Radicals were held to around seven percent, though nothing will stop the usual suspects from rabbiting on about 'fascists in Kiev'. The cold fact is, though, that the remains of the Party of Regions out-polled the hard right, and will have more seats in the Rada than the people some like to pretend are the Kiev government.

[newthinking]

2. Half "the radicals" allied in the formation of Yatsunek's new party - People's Front

Through the People's front (War Party) these extremists just became more "mainstream".

Very clever they were.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025546464

[The Magistrate]

4. You Did Not Come Out Of That Thread Very Well, Sir

It will not assist you to bring it again to the fore here.

[newthinking]

5. Eye of the beholder....

I trust people can read and make up their own minds. Even furthermore they can research the party themselves.

[The Magistrate]

9. Eye Of Newt, Sir --- We Have Been Through That Before

You have to get the recipe right or the chants cannot work.

[Ken Burch]

3. There's nobody in Ukraine,even the pro-Russian factions, that wanted "communism".

The "rebels" never had anything to do with the Communist Party of Ukraine(a group that tried to attach itself to them, but never played any meaningful role in the pro-Russian faction, let alone the leading role), and it's silly of Poroshenko to try to pass the rebellion off as the work of a "communist plot". All the parties(pro-Russian and pro-Ukraine)supported rival forms of right-wing nationalismt -and there is no reason to think that voters in "pro-Russian" areas would have voted Communist if those areas had been polled on Sunday.

Both Putin and Poroshenko are loathesome figures, but "communism" isn't to blame for either of them. Neither is anything else remotely connected to the values of the Left.

[newthinking]

6. Even the modern "communist" parties in Ukraine were really just socialist parties attached to the

name recognition there.

The adjustment has been hard on the older generation and they have generally not done well since the USSR broke up and many older people remained in the communist party.

[The Magistrate]

7. Actually There Is A Ukrainian Communist Party Sir

it put up a party list in this election, but did not get enough votes for seats. It had thirty-odd seats in the former Rada, and was solidly in support of Russia and the rebels in the east, for which it was read out of the body.

[Ken Burch]

11. I re-edited the post to acknowledge that the party existed.

The point remains, though, that it's silly to act as if the communists are somehow the primary instigators of the pro-Russian rebellion in Eastern Ukraine. The rebellion is right-wing nationalist. as is Putin.

There's no call for Cold War rhetoric regarding Ukraine.

[The Magistrate]

14. In Ukraine It Matters, Sir

There is, for obvious reasons a great deal of residual hard feelings towards Communism, as the author of genocidal famine. Some years after independence, an attempt was made to ban the party, but this was thrown out by the courts. By aligning with Russia and secessionist rebels in a time of war, the party certainly won itself no friends, either. A man who stood up in Congress in 1863 and called for success to attend the just cause of the Confederacy would not have been received gently. Even this harkens back to old memories, when Communist parties generally functioned, whatever their revolutionary claims, as simply tools of Soviet Russian foreign policy.

[Ken Burch]

15. But after 1991. the Ukrainian CP(which I would never vote for, btw, being independent Left)

existed as simply one party among many parties.

There's no reason to see it as uniquely evil now, or to be spitefully glad that it lost its seats(if there had been voting in the rebel areas, it likely would have won most of its current seats)

The Communist Party of Ukraine won the strength it won because it was the only left-of-center, anti-austerity party in all of Ukrainian politics. There were no independent Left parties, no democratic socialists, no Greens, just right-wing nationalists, other than the CP. It became, by default, the only party that was fighting for social justice at all in Ukraine...and that's a horrible tragedy.

It just bothers me to see Cold War rhetoric being revived about Ukraine when the situation there has nothing whatsoever to do with the question of whether the world should be capitalist or "communist".

[The Magistrate]

17. There Are People, Sir, Who React To 'Communist' like A Jew To 'Nazi'

A good many people in eastern Europe assign to Communism and Communists the status of embodying absolute evil.

There are some that do not, of course, and it was among these the Ukrainian Communist Party found its strength, on a platform was residual Soviet identification, the appeal of former strengths embodied in the line that dissolution of the U.S.S.R. was a great tragedy and defeat for right and justice. In this century, it has steadily lost electoral strength, and after the collapse of Yanukovich's regime, trapped itself by its steadfast support for what by far the greatest proportion of Ukrainians regard as treason and a foreign foe.

[joshcryer]

10. Actually, there are posts about exactly that in the Socialists group.

[joshcryer]

8. Hilarious how people were saying they would rise to power.

[Ken Burch]

12. Hilarious that you still think that "anticommunism" is worth anyone's time.

It's enough to say that the Ukrainian communists are irrelevant. Other than that, they are nothing more than just another political party. There's no reason any longer to treat "communism" as something that's in a whole different category than any other school of thought.

[joshcryer]

13. I don't think that.

[Ken Burch]

16. I don't get your point, then.

The Ukrainian dispute isn't left vs. right in any sense we would recognize. It's down to whether you feel that you would have a better life(as a Ukrainian)allied with "the West" or allied with Putin.

The "pro-Western" side could make life a lot easier for themselves by dialing back the pro-corporate, pro-austerity part of their program.
"Choosing the West" shouldn't have to mean choosing layoffs and wage cuts.

[joshcryer]

18. The point is any reasonable observer would've seen that party as weak.

And that they were trying to do a power grab. People identified with them as "communists" when in reality they exemplified the worst kind of "communism." Cronyism, poverty. And it wasn't like they had a united front anyway, they were factionalized with many in their own ranks wanting to get rid of the armed thugs roaming around Donbas calling for secession and kidnapping and murdering people.

It's actually quite interesting when we talk about being against austerity, while at the same time saying that Ukraine should pay its bills to Russia. Of course, I agree with both, but the only way you get around austerity is to ... absolve Ukraine of the bills. But Russia isn't going to do that. So where are they left standing?