Political party “Svoboda”
Main information
“Svoboda is a political party with 25 local branches (in all regions and in Kyiv), most of which were inherited from Ukraine of the Future. This is the name of the party before it was renamed in October 2019.
Registration: October 13, 1991
Website: www.svoboda.org.ua
Political ideology: nationalism
Founder of the party: Oleh Tyahnybok
History of the party
- September 29, 1991: A meeting of the initiative group of the new nationalist movement takes place in Lviv
- October 13, 1991: The founding congress of the Social National Party of Ukraine (SNPU) is held. Yaroslav Andrushkiv is elected leader of the party, and the Committee of Commissioners becomes the governing body.
- September 9, 1995: The second congress of the SNPU is held to officially register the party with the Ministry of Justice. On this day, the party’s Charter and Program are adopted. Yaroslav Andrushkiv is re-elected as the party’s chairman.
- October 16, 1995: The Ministry of Justice registers the Social National Party of Ukraine.
- November 2, 1996: The third congress of the party takes place, the Statute is finalized, and Yaroslav Andrushkiv is re-elected chairman.
- December 18, 1997: To participate in the 1998 parliamentary elections, the electoral bloc “Less Words” is formed, which includes the Social National Party of Ukraine (SNPU) and the State Independence of Ukraine party.
- March 29, 1998: Elections to the Verkhovna Rada are held. The “Less Words” bloc ranks 29th out of 30 participants in the multi-mandate constituency. The bloc received 45,155 votes, which is 0.16%. In single-mandate constituencies, only Oleh Tyahnybok is elected among the 6 candidates of the bloc.
- March 20, 1999: The fifth congress of the party takes place, and a resolution on opposition to the left forces is adopted
- March 31, 2002: Elections to the Verkhovna Rada are held. The SNPU party does not participate in the elections, but Oleh Tyahnybok, nominated by the Our Ukraine bloc, is elected to parliament in the Buh single-mandate constituency.
- February 14, 2004: The ninth congress of the SNPU party is held. It is decided to change the name of the party to the All-Ukrainian Union “Svoboda”. Oleh Tiahnybok becomes the new leader instead of Y. Andrushkiv.
- June 4, 2004: The tenth congress is held. The intention to create a single right-wing force within the parties is agreed upon: Svoboda, the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (KUN), the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Banderite movement, OUN (b)). A decision is made to support Viktor Yushchenko in the upcoming presidential election.
- July 20, 2004: Oleh Tiahnybok is expelled from the parliamentary faction “Our Ukraine” after he expressed a xenophobic position on the fight against “Jews and Muscovites.”
- December 10, 2005: The eleventh congress of the Svoboda party takes place. A decision is made to independently participate in the next parliamentary and local elections, and a list of candidates is approved.
- March 17, 2006: Parliamentary elections are held. According to their results, the All-Ukrainian Union Svoboda ranks 18th out of 45 participants and gains 0.36% (91,321 votes).
- August 5, 2007: At the eighteenth congress of the party, a decision is made to participate independently in the early parliamentary elections, and an electoral list is formed. A program is adopted, which declares the creation of a presidential republic, the protection of the rights of Ukrainians as the titular nation, and the restoration of Ukraine’s nuclear status.
- September 30, 2007: In the 2007 snap parliamentary elections, the party takes 8th place out of 20 participants, gaining 0.76% (178,660 votes).
May 25, 2008: Oleh Tiahnybok runs for mayor of Kyiv, finishing 8th and gaining 1.37% of the vote. In the early elections to the Kyiv City Council, Svoboda gains 1.37% of the vote. - March 15, 2009: Svoboda takes first place in the early elections to the Ternopil Regional Council with 34.69% of the vote.
- January 17, 2010: The first round of the presidential elections takes place, with Svoboda candidate O. Tiahnybok taking 8th place out of 18 participants, gaining 1.43% (352,282 votes).
As of January 2020, the political force is represented in 15 regional councils, and its members are mayors in such regional centers as Ternopil (Serhiy Nadal), Ivano-Frankivsk (Ruslan Martsinkiv), and Khmelnytskyi (Oleksandr Symchyshyn). A regional breakdown of electoral preferences (as of October 2019 ) shows that the highest level of support is in these same cities.
The intention of Svoboda to compete for representation in local and regional councils in 2020 is evidenced by the facts of buckwheat eating in Volyn and Ivano-Frankivsk.
Members of the party have repeatedly left the party. For example, on November 5, 2019, former MP Yuriy Levchenko and Kyiv City Council members Prokhor Antonenko and Sviatoslav Kutnyak left the party. Subsequently, Svoboda members, along with representatives of the National Corps and the Sokil NGO, demanded that ex-Svoboda members of the Kyiv City Council Antonenko and Kutniak resign their seats. They motivated their actions by party discipline and the election of deputies to the Kyiv City Council as party representatives. Earlier, in 2018, three ex-Svoboda members — Ihor Turskyi, Ivan Sorokolit, and Roman Navrotskyi — were recalled from the city council in Ternopil. They had previously been expelled from the party and faction.
The party ran in the 2019 early parliamentary elections on a joint list with a number of nationalist organizations. It included Svoboda, National Corps, Right Sector, Yarosh State Initiative, Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, and Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists. The party list includes 224 candidates. It should be noted that there were no women candidates in the top ten, and the party was one of the few that ignored the gender balance. At the same time, the only representative of the Nationalists in the Parliament of the IX convocation was Oksana Savchuk, a person involved in anti-corruption investigations, who won in the 83rd electoral district (Ivano-Frankivsk).
Finance.
Svoboda did not get into the parliament, but the support of 315,568 Ukrainians allowed the party to apply for state funding for the next five years, as it overcame the 2% threshold.
The party’s key donor is said to be businessman and former MP Ihor Kryvetskyi, who confirmed this information. However, Kryvetskyi does not appear in the official financial statements. The businessman provides the party with an office in Kyiv for free. He has transferred funds only twice in the last 4 years.
The party has been involved in fraud. In 2016 , the main donor of Svoboda was its own accountant, pensioner Yaroslav Peleshak, who transferred over UAH 760 thousand to the party and at the same time received a salary from it. Later, the NACP caught Svoboda on the fact that when the party was officially financed by its own party members, it was actually the same pensioner who carried the money to the bank. It was about UAH 2.3 million. The court found Peleshak guilty, but the contributions were not confiscated because the time limit for imposing an administrative charge had expired.
Svoboda itself was the only contributor to the party’s campaign for the early parliamentary elections. About UAH 24 million was deposited into its election fund account by the central office of Svoboda.
It is also worth mentioning that Svoboda appears in the Party of Regions ‘ barn book as a party that received $200,000 in 2010 with a justification: “All-Ukrainian Union “Svoboda” (commission)”. Svoboda denied such cooperation with the Party of Regions.
Representation in the regions:
Rating:
