Nasha Ukrayina
Our Ukraine–People's Self-Defense Bloc
The Our Ukraine–People's Self-Defense Bloc (Блок Наша Україна–Народна Самооборона, Blok Nasha Ukrayina-Narodna Samooborona, OU-PSD) is an electoral alliance active in Ukraine, associated with President Viktor Yushchenko. Since 2005, the bloc has been dominated by a core consisting of the People's Union "Our Ukraine" party and five smaller partner parties.
The Our Ukraine Bloc is most closely associated with the Orange Revolution and continues to use orange as its political colour. In July 2007, the old Our Ukraine bloc had been reorganized into the Our Ukraine–People's Self-Defense Bloc for the 2007 parliamentary election in September 2007. The member parties had planned to merge into a single party in December 2007 but on November 16, 2007 People’s Self-Defense decided to end its participation in the process of forming a united party since then that process is unclear. The alliance currently holds 72 out of 450 parliamentary seats.
Current members
The current members of the Our Ukraine–People's Self-Defense Bloc include:|
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History
The original Our Ukraine Bloc was formed in Kiev (Kyiv), Ukraine in 2001 in preparation for the 2002 parliamentary elections. At the time of its formation, the leader of the bloc was Viktor Yushchenko.Ukrainian parliamentary election, 2002
At the 2002 legislative elections, won 23.6% of the popular vote and 112 out of 450 seats. It was the first time when Communists failed to take the first place in vote. The alliance included the following parties:
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Ukrainian parliamentary election, 2006
The "Our Ukraine" bloc was soundly defeated in the 2006 Ukrainian parliamentary election with only 13,95% of the recorded vote came in third place behind the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc - 22% 156 seats, and the Party of Regions -33% 175 seats. It won 81 out of 450 seats.
Following the elections there has been calls for Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko who was closely aligned and spokesperson for Our Ukraine during the March Parliamentary election to resign from Our Ukraine and to stand independent.
Ukrainian parliamentary election, 2007
During the early parliamentary elections held on September 30, 2007, the Our Ukraine–People's Self-Defense Bloc was placed in third place, after the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc and Party of Regions. Our Ukraine-People's Self Defence bloc received 14.16% of the vote, 236964 less votes in 2007 than the Our Ukraine bloc received in 2006, representing an overall swing of 0.20%.
On October 15, 2007, despite the Party of Regions gaining the most seats of all participating political parties, Our Ukraine–People's Self-Defense Bloc and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc agreed to form a majority coalition in the new parliament of the 6th convocation. On November 29, a coalition was signed between the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc and Our Ukraine–People's Self-Defense Bloc (representing 45% of the national vote). On 18 December 2007 Yulia Tymoshenko, with a margin of two votes, was elected Prime Minister.
In February 2008 several prominent members resigned from the party. Viktor Baloha, Head of the President's Secretariat resigned on 15 February (to lift the issue of the correlation between the authorities as the President’s Chief of Staff and as a member of the OU-PSD presidium). Roman Bezsmertny, high ranked party official, along with people’s deputies, Mykhaylo Polyanchych, Ihor Kryl, Viktor Topolov, Oksana Bilozir and Vasyl Petevka resigned on 20 February, in a joint statement the declared that: "some of the leaders of the party play their own game, coming from personal interests and it has nothing to do with responsibility, pluralism and norms of democracy.
References
See also
External links
- Official web-site. Official web-site of Our Ukraine–People's Self-Defense Bloc. Retrieved on 2007-10-02..
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Thursday October 09, 2008 at 15:18:23 PDT (GMT -0700)
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