This year’s crop of electoral promises is bountiful on the Ukrainian steppe, but just which way the agricultural vote is headed is as uncertain as tomorrow’s weather forecast.
Ukrainian agriculture has never fully recovered from the horrors of collectivisation under Stalin in the 1930s, but remains of enormous strategic importance for all parties.
Even today, 16 years since independence and eight years past the time that then-president Leonid Kuchma decreed the extinction of all remaining collective farms, most major political parties continue to talk about the village and agriculture as if one might be synonymous with the other.
Courting the village vote
Although the Our Ukraine website sets out the bloc’s agricultural policies, perhaps a recent visit by the president to Cherkasy gave greater clarity to the presidential party’s views.
Yushchenko’s rhetoric naturally had a familiar ring as he told the crowd: “Wheat for Ukraine is like oil for Russia. I see it as the nation’s strategic course.”
Just as at all agricultural meetings, the president pushed his political agenda with a statement that the government, “constantly interferes” in the agricultural sector. He called many of its grain policies, “remarkably absurd and negative,” and reprimanded the cabinet of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych for using non-market methods.
He went on to say a state that does not promote commercial interests in agriculture often has to import grain. He further derided the government’s administrative and restrictive measures as, “…unprofessional and irresponsible.”
Our Ukraine’s website gets into much greater specifics with talk of “renewing Ukraine’s villages…transparent registration of property rights on land… decreasing land taxes for villagers.” As with most campaign manifestos, the site has a laundry list of goodies, including a promise of UAH 20,000 in state aid and social housing for university graduates who agree to work not less than three years in villages.
In addition, there would be a 20% monthly salary bonus for village teachers, doctors, cultural and social sphere employees; and every village can count on a village dispensary or medical-aid station with a car. Finally, the site says that Our Ukraine would assure that every pupil living three kilometers away or more from school would get paid bus transport and every village school would get Internet access by 2010.
Yuriy Lutsenko, leader of the Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defence Bloc, is even bolder with his acknowledgements, telling a recent Vasilkiv news conference that the moratorium on land sales must be abolished. He also said pointedly that in spite of leftist opposition to land sales, “…nevertheless it is on sale.” He added: “It is necessary to put agricultural land up for sale on an open and fair market and pass the corresponding laws that will secure the peasant from predatory buying of [agricultural] lands.” A few years ago, a statement of this type would have been a scandal; today it is considered to be relatively normal campaign rhetoric.
Regions accused over grain
The Party of Regions’ platform statement on agricultural is very broad in nature and rings many of the bells that resound with agriculturalists. However, the Regions party is considered more industrially oriented and bears the burden of having over the last year taken what many in the farming community would consider very negative decisions about grain exports.
Echoing the historical concentration on the village as the center of farming, the Regions manifesto calls for new effective forms of management, wider implantation of rent and land mortgage policy, plus support of native producers and products. It goes on to call for modern equipment provision on a leasing basis; formation of land and mortgage banks; support for private farmers, and solving the price disparity between farm and industrial production.
Tymoshenko targets the rural vote
Perhaps unique among Ukraine’s politicians, Yulia Tymoshenko has a talent for picking issues and pleasing crowds. Her website and campaign materials make much of her support for agriculture, but where she lists specific priorities, agriculture hardly receives mention.
However, in her frequent visits to villages in out-of-the-way places, she seems to know the right buttons to push to get farmers and villagers excited.
During recent village visits, she has claimed that residents pay four times more for imported gas than locally-produced gas, saying that a solution would only require a decision at governmental level. This suggestion of what would in effect be subsidised gas prices for farm villages is a very popular item on the rural hustings.
Tymoshenko continues to play the populist card when it comes to the sale of land, telling villagers in one case: “Today they try to start a negative plan for Ukraine, which, obviously, was worked out by non-Ukrainians, after which they intend at first to distribute land, then cheapen it and sell it so that common people could never again own this land in Ukraine.”
“We consider that it is necessary to give land to peasants. If they lease it out, they must get the payment they deserve from leaseholders,” she added.
Tymoshenko has also promised that peasant farmers must be recipients of cheap credit at interest rates of 3-4%, which she claims to be already the case in western Europe. On other village visits, she has made much of the fact that average salaries in the agricultural sector are below the national average. She proposed levelling this disparity with lower taxes for agricultural workers.
In some regions where the dairy farming tradition is strong, Tymoshenko has complained that large dairies, which she refers to as “monopolists,” control the dairy industry. They buy milk from farmers for “kopecks…A litre of milk is cheaper than a litre of ordinary water,” she recently told one crowd.
When it comes to working the crowds who attend her frequent village meetings, Tymoshenko is clearly skilled and she hopes to pick
up a large number of votes in spite of the fact that she is preaching an economic policy that many see as being out of step with current Ukrainian realities.
Communists - more of the same
The Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) remains true to its traditional principles, with government control of agriculture and high subsidisation of peasant farmers forming the policy bedrock.
The CPU agricultural manifesto begins with a statement that at least 50% of agricultural production would be subject to government order with funds to support such orders earmarked at no less than 10% of the gross national product.
The CPU wants soft credit facilities, with interest rates not to exceed 5% for support of the development of the country’s agro-industrial complex. Unsaid, but clearly implied, is that these soft credits would go only to state-owned enterprises, as was historically the case. State ownership of, “… land, mineral wealth, the atmosphere, forests, water resources and other natural resources within the territorial boundaries of Ukraine” remains a key part of the Communist agenda, with special emphasis on opposing the sale of agricultural land.
Socialists – pivotal no more?
Like the Communists, the Socialists have added no new strings to their political bow and still argue for a return to a greater role for government in the economy and increased ownership of essential elements of the nation’s productive capacity.
In particular, the buying and selling of agricultural land is anathema to the Socialists, and control of priority branches of the economy remains part of the Socialist manifesto, but according to polls it seems unlikely that they will get the chance to implement their well-worn agricultural agenda following the elections.
