People's Front Народний фронт | |
|---|---|
 | |
| President | Arseniy Yatsenyuk[1] |
| Founder | Arseniy Yatsenyuk Oleksandr Turchynov |
| Founded | 31 March 2014 |
| Split from | All-Ukrainian Union "Fatherland" |
| Headquarters | Akademik Kurchatov Street, 3,Kyiv, 02068 |
| Ideology | |
| Political position | Centre-right[4] toright-wing[5] |
| European affiliation | European People's Party (observer)[6] |
| Colours | Yellow,Blue |
| Slogan | Strong team for difficult times |
| Verkhovna Rada | 0 / 450 |
| Regions (2015)[7] | 12 / 158,399 |
| Website | |
| nfront | |
People's Front (Ukrainian:Народний фронт,romanized: Narodnyi front; also translated asNational Front orPopular Front[8]) is anationalist andconservativepolitical party inUkraine founded byArseniy Yatsenyuk andOleksandr Turchynov in 2014.[8]
Many members of the new political entity were former members ofFatherland including Yatsenyuk and Turchynov.[9]
The party won 82 seats in the2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election.[10][11] The party did not participate in the July2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election.[12]
The party was registered at theUkrainian Ministry of Justice on 31 March 2014[13] as "People's Action".[14] On 12 August 2014 it was renamed to its current name.[14]
Late August 2014 the partyFatherland split amidst differences over key policies and the refusal to have the ballot led byArseniy Yatsenyuk.[14]
People's Front held its first party congress on 10 September 2014.[8] At this congress Yatsenyuk was elected chairman of the political council and Turchynov was elected to lead its headquarters.[13] At the time Yatsenyuk wasPrime Minister of Ukraine and Turchynov wasChairman of the Verkhovna Rada.[13] Several high-ranking members of Ukrainianterritorial defense battalions, who at the time were fighting in theWar in Donbas, were made part of the Party's "military council" (though not full party members).[15] In his speech to the first party congress Yatsenyuk called for "unification and unity of all democratic forces" since this would be "the recipe for our victory".[16] Many high-ranking Fatherland members became founding members of the party includingLyudmyla Denisova,Arsen Avakov,Pavlo Petrenko andAndriy Parubiy.[14][9][17]
In September 2014 it was reported that People's Front and thePetro Poroshenko Bloc were in talks over joint participation in the forthcoming parliamentary election. By 12 September the two parties had reached only an agreement that the Poroshenko Bloc would not put forward candidates for 10 single-member constituencies to avoid competition with People's Front.[18] The following day Yatsenyuk announced that People's Front would stand alone in the election: "We should be going into the elections together with the President, but I am not satisfied with the party of President Poroshenko. So we are different in camps, although we share the same viewpoints for the sake of change and reforms."[19]
Concerning theWar in Donbas involving pro-Russian separatists, the party position to end the conflict is ambiguous. According to political scientist Tadeusz A. Olszański the party is in favor of use of force to resolve the conflict.[3]
The first 10 candidates from the party list for the 2014 parliamentary election were:
The vast majority of the party list were political newcomers.[14]
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At the election, the party won the nationwide popular vote with 22.14% against 21.81% for thePetro Poroshenko Bloc, in addition to 18single-member constituencies.[11] The Petro Poroshenko Bloc however, won 69 constituencies for a total of 132 seats.[11] The voters of the People's Front were mostly rural residents ofwestern andcentral Ukraine.[14]
On 21 November 2014 the party became a member of the coalition supporting the currentsecond Yatsenyuk government and send five minister into this government.[20][21]
In a June 2015 opinion poll bySociological group "RATING" 2.7% of the polled stated they would vote for People's Front.[22] AKyiv International Institute of Sociology poll of the same month gave the party 1.6%.[23] According to Ukrainian expert political opinion the fast decline of the party's popularity was caused because voters blamed Yatsenyuk and his party for the rise in tariffs for utilities and a negative assessment of the Prime Ministership of Yatsenyuk.[14]
The party did not take part in theOctober 2015 local elections.[24]
(Following the fall of the second Yatsenyuk government) the party joined the coalition that supports the 14 April 2016 installedGroysman government.[25]
In the 23 December 2018local elections forterritorial communities representatives of the party were elected to village councils.[26] It had nominated 247 candidates[26]
The party did not submit a list for the snap2019 parliamentary elections and lost all of its seats, with some of its members running as independents inFPTP constituencies.[27][28][12]
In June 2020 one of the parties foundersOleksandr Turchynov became head of the2020 Ukrainian local elections headquarters of the partyEuropean Solidarity.[29] In this election 1 person won a local seat on behalf of People's Front.[30]
The military council is a special body of People's Front. It develops proposals for strengthening of the defence system of Ukraine.
The council was created on 10 September 2014 together with the political and coordinating councils of the party. It was formed by the party congress which also approved the council's composition. It included the Chief of Staff of the party and Chairman of the Verkhovna RadaOleksandr Turchynov, Interior MinisterArsen Avakov, coordinator of the "Information Resistance" blog, Lt. Col.Dmytro Tymchuk, former acting Head of the Presidential Administration and co-founder of the revivedNational GuardSerhiy Pashynskiy and former secretary of theNational Security and Defence Council of Ukraine,Euromaidan commandant and organizer of theMaidan self-defense unitsAndriy Parubiy.
The council is made up of leading commanders of the territorial defense battalions:Andriy Biletsky, commander of theAzov Battalion,Yuriy Bereza, commander of theDnipro Battalion,Kostyantyn Mateichenko, commander of the Artemivsk battalion,Roman Pytski, commander of the Chernihiv battalion,Andriy Teteruk, commander of the Myrotvorets battalion,Yevhen Deydey, commander of the Kyiv-1 battalion,Mykola Shvalya, commander of the Zoloti Vorota battalion,Ihor Lapin, company commander of theAidar BattalionSerhiy Sydoryn, vice-battalion commander of the National Guard andMykhailo Havryluk, a soldier of the Kyivska Rus battalion.
The founding political council includedArsen Avakov,Liliya Hrynevych,Vyacheslav Kyrylenko,Pavlo Petrenko,Andriy Parubiy,Oleksandr Turchinov,Arseniy Yatsenyuk andTetyana Chornovol.
| Year | Popular vote | % of popular vote | Overall seats won | Seat change | Government |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 3,485,191 | 22.16 | 82 / 450 | New | Coalition government |
| 2019 | did not participate | — | 0 / 450 |  82 | Extra-parliamentary opposition |
(in Ukrainian)