Ukraine-Canada: two views on elections
On Sept. 8, 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada dissolved parliament and called an early federal election. Twenty-two students from various Ukrainian universities, who were selected to take part in the Canadian-Ukrainian Parliamentary Program, have come to Canada to monitor the election campaign and the elections to be held on Oct. 14. Now they are ready to share their vision of the similarities between the election campaigns in Ukraine and Canada and whether they can be compared at all.
When there was a debate in Ukraine in 2007 on whether to hold a snap parliamentary election, those who favored an early election cited the example of Canada. At the time, Ukrainian politicians were shouting, “If re-elections are a customary and by no means destabilizing factor in such a stable and democratically developed country as Canada, then why can such a young democracy as Ukraine not use similar methods to try and resolve the political crisis in parliament?”
This seemingly sound argument failed to justify itself in practice because a new reshuffle of parliamentary seats once again led to an impasse, which neither stabilized things nor improved the performance of Ukraine’s highest legislative body.
Why did Canada’s experience prove unsuitable for Ukraine? The reason is simple. It is far easier to find differences than similarities in the political systems of Canada and Ukraine, from the nomination of candidates within a party to campaigning methods.
The first radical difference lies in the very nature of the election system. In Canada, elections on all levels – from local to federal – are held in first-past-the-post constituencies. Voters are thus able to control those whom they have elected. If the elected candidates do not pay enough attention to the concerns of their voters and work too little for the benefit of the local community, their political career will have zero chances of continuing successfully because a rival party will tip the scales of the people’s love in its favor.
Meanwhile, in the past few years Ukraine has seen a transition from the first-past-the-post to the proportional system, and today, when voters choose one party or another, they can only guess at what contribution the top candidates will make to the development of their city or region.
The question of election campaign funding is still a rather unfamiliar and therefore interesting issue for Ukrainians. Under Canadian law, an individual may not contribute more than 1,200 Canadian dollars to a party’s election campaign fund (every year this figure is subject to changes in line with the rate of inflation), which rules out the possibility of big capital financing a campaign. In contrast, cash injections from certain financial groups account for the lion’s share of Ukrainian parties’ election funds, with just a fraction coming from individual party members.
Another essential difference is the use of available financial resources during a campaign. In Ukraine, an election is perhaps one of the few things on which one must not economize, while in Canada every cent is counted. First of all, in Canada all party receipts and their correspondence to expenditures are verified. Second, excessive spending during an election campaign can backfire on a candidate because his or her opponents will not miss an opportunity to criticize the thoughtless squandering of taxpayers’ money.
Yet all these differences do not appear to be that significant in comparison to campaigning methods, which are diametrically opposed in Canada and in Ukraine. According to Maria Minna, an MP from the Liberal Party with 15 years of parliamentary experience, Canadians favor a “people-oriented policy” or “face-to-face” campaigning, which means that politicians try to meet as many of their voters as possible and ask them about their problems, explain their party’s position on certain issues, and enlist voter support.
It is no surprise, therefore, that TV ads or advertising in public places (e.g., on billboards), which are so widespread in Ukraine, are practically of no use across the Atlantic. The only factors in the mass media’s impact on public opinion-common to both Canada and Ukraine-are televised debates and election campaign coverage in the print media. This kind of approach is in sharp contrast to Ukrainian realities, where a political party can only stand on its own feet if it controls or receives favorable coverage from at least one TV channel.
In Ukraine, almost the entire burden of an election campaign lies on the shoulders of a party’s key figures that whistle-stop all over the country, talking to their supporters on central town squares or theater stages. Paradoxical as it may sound to the average Ukrainian, a “Canadian-style MP” is a far more down-to-earth individual who, together with a group of volunteers, goes door to door day every day during the election campaign, greeting voters, asking them about their life, and finding out if they can count on their vote come election day.
In Ukraine, joint campaigning undertaken by politicians and famous music groups has become a real hit during election races in recent years. Voter get their fair share of political information as well as an opportunity to relax a bit by listening to their favorite group perform. A positive trend at first glance, it still smacks too much of the ancient Roman principle of “bread and circuses” for the populace.
Instead, Canada emphasizes the distribution of campaign booklets, personal or telephone canvassing, and displaying campaign posters on voters’ lawns. The latter campaigning method deserves special attention. Its aim is to activate the most reliable electorate and convince undecided voters to see, on the subconscious level, that many people are already supporting a certain party and, at best, to persuade this type of voter to cast a vote according to the principle, “I side with the majority.”
From this viewpoint, Canadian election campaigns involuntarily evoke an association with a successful market study, the goal of which is to deliver a political product (in this case, a party or a candidate) to as many consumers (i.e., the electorate) as possible. One can also draw similar parallels by analyzing the way politicians communicate with their voters, which often resembles the principle of “The customer is always right.”
Regardless of party preferences and the occasionally hostile attitude of Canadians to election propaganda, political candidates always listen patiently to voters’ comments, try to explain their viewpoints and “play” on voters’ particular concerns (e.g., assistance to seniors when speaking to pensioners, or child birth benefits when speaking to young families, or talking to new immigrants in their native language).
As mentioned earlier, Canadians regard early elections as a political necessity that will shift the accents in parliament when the current composition of MPs encounters problems that trigger a negative reaction in the electorate. Since re-elections occur quite often, candidates’ campaign centers function like clockwork – without too much commotion and according to time-tested patterns.
One of the things that guarantee effective electioneering is the large number of volunteers who help conduct the most labor-intensive part of campaigning, such as distributing booklets or going door to door. In general, Western society has a high regard for volunteering. No matter how high your college grades were, your chances of finding a good job will greatly diminish if you have not demonstrated an active civic stand. Since volunteering for an election campaign is especially valued, candidates’ headquarters are rarely short of people who readily offer their help for free.
Meanwhile, during elections few Ukrainians agree to work for nothing because they are guided by the following principle: since the prospective MPs are by no means poor, why shouldn’t voters cash in on their politicians at least once every four or five years? Canadians, though, take an extremely serious attitude to the question of their political choice. This is why you often see people in campaign centers who care so much about the future of their party that they are ready to make an all-out effort to help it win, even though their own financial gain is minimal.
In comparing election campaigns in Ukraine and Canada, one cannot definitely say that one is better than the other, or that one of them needs to be radically changed. They are simply different and correspond broadly to the political culture of the local populace. Every state experiences the creation of a political system in its own way. Nobody can be 100-percent certain that there is only one correct approach to organizing a successful election campaign or election.
At first glance, an ideal election system, which has taken into account the years-long experience of advanced democratic countries, may prove totally helpless in the “field conditions” of a specific country or region. The only conclusion is that Ukraine must continue to tread its own path of trial and error in search of an election system that will best suit the Ukrainian realities and the Ukrainian mentality.
