Self Reliance Samopomich Самопоміч | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Leader | Oksana Syroyid[1] |
| Founder | Andriy Sadovyi |
| Founded | 29 December 2012 |
| Headquarters | Lviv |
| Membership(2019[2]) | ±2,000[2] |
| Ideology | |
| Political position | Centre-right |
| European affiliation | European People's Party (observer)[7] |
| Colours | Green Blue |
| Verkhovna Rada[8] | 1 / 450 |
| Regions (2020) | 222 / 43,122 |
| Lviv Oblast Council | 9 / 84 |
| Website | |
| samopomich | |
TheAssociation "Self Reliance" (Ukrainian:Об'єднання «Самопоміч»,romanized: Obiednannia “Samopomich”) is aliberal conservative andChristian democraticpolitical party inUkraine.
It was founded on 29 December 2012, and identifies with the ideology of "Christian morality and common sense." The name of the party is similar to the name of theNGO, founded by former leader,Andriy Sadovyi in 2004. The party won 33 seats in the2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election.[9][10] In the2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election, the party won a single seat, the122nd electoral district inLviv Oblast.[11]
The name and ideology of the party is referring to the history ofUkrainian cooperative movement, which rose to prominence inWestern Ukraine in the beginning of the 20th century. The financialsocieties that appeared prior toWorld War I inGalicia were formed as a part of Ukrainian national movement. The idea to start Ukrainian national financial cooperation societies belonged to Dr. Yevhen Olesnytskyi, lawyer, the head ofStryi'sProsvita movement and member of theAustro-Hungarian Parliament.[12] He started to organise seminars for like-minded people, who supported the idea of solving economic problems before resolving political issues. The fight against poverty and backwardness was the main goal of the organisation, which quickly acquired popularity. The local Prosvita activists supported the call for action, and already in 1904 Ostap Nyzhankivskyi, composer and priest from the village Zavadiv near Stryi, founded first cooperative of milk producers.
The idea proved to be popular among Ukrainian peasants; in 1914, the Union of Milk Cooperatives united more than 100 unions under the leadership of Ostap Nyzhankivskyi. Soon the Union started to issue its own newspaper, which received the name 'Samopomich'. TheWWI and the followingPolish-Ukrainian war interrupted the movement, as its activists devoted themselves to the work for theWest Ukrainian People's Republic. The leader of the movement, Ostap Nyzhankivskyi, became the district commissar ofStryi and died in the battle for the city on 13 May 1919.
The cooperative activism reemerged after theWWI. The officers of the Ukrainian Galician Army who had emigrated toCzechoslovakia andDenmark, returned to Ukraine and brought there the experience of European cooperative movement. Until the late 1930s, the new cooperative 'Ukrainian Milk Society 'Maslosoyiuz' united up to 500,000 farms, and became an important player in the European agriculture market.
The practice of cooperation spread to other spheres of life: Galician Ukrainians founded their own bank (bank 'Dnister'), trade network (shops of 'Maslosoyiuz' and 'People's Trade'), supervision bodies (Revision Union of Ukrainian Cooperatives), insurance companies, educational system, etc. Such organisations, asSokil,Plast, Sport Society 'Ukraine' popularised healthy lifestyle, theTaras Shevchenko Academic Society united scientists and intellectuals. TheWorld War II and Soviet repressions brought an end to the civic activity on the territory of Ukraine.
The contemporary history of the political party Self Reliance started in 2004, with the creation of anNGO called "Self Reliance".Andriy Sadovyi, who was the director of the Institute of the City Development, initiated the foundation of an organisation, which would derive from the history and traditions of the Ukrainian cooperation movement. Thus, the charity "Self Reliance" was established on 4 November 2004. The main activities of the organisation were: promoting legal literacy among the citizens, promoting healthy lifestyle, organisation of the volunteer movement and establishing local cooperation entities.[13][14]
In 2006, Andriy Sadovyi was elected the mayor ofLviv. He relied on the Self Reliance team in creating the development strategy for the city of Lviv. In 2010, Sadovyi was reelected for the office of mayor.
On 14 October 2012, Sadovyi began the formation of the Self Reliance political party. The party united the legacy of Ukrainian cooperative movement and Christian-democratic ideology. Self Reliance was registered as a political party on 29 December 2012.[15] In 2013, Self Reliance had its firstconstituent assembly in theBuilding of Pedagogical Museum inKyiv.[16] The party started to form local representation units and develop ideological approach. Self Reliance activists participated inEuromaidan.
Self Reliance participated in the25 May 2014 elections to theKyiv City Council.[17] The party asked the citizens to propose candidates for the election, and assigned the position in the party list according to the preferences of the public. In that election, the party received 7.4% of votes and won five seats in the Council.[18][19]
On 28 February 2014, the party's leaderAndriy Sadovyi, said Self Reliance would take part in thesnap parliamentary elections scheduled for October 2014.[20] In theUkrainian parliamentary electionHanna Hopko headed the party list, followed byDonbas Battalion commanderSemen Semenchenko, while Sadovyi obtained the 50th place. The party campaigned for local self-organisation and decentralisation. The party finished third in the election.[10]
It was the only party which did not have any former parliamentarians on its election list but rather people from communityNGOs and medium-sized businesses.[14][21] Candidates ofVolia were included in the election list of Self Reliance.[22] Its parliamentary faction received 33 mandates including one won atconstituency elections.[10] The faction includes experts-activists out of the Reanimation Package of Reforms (a public initiative), military personnel and business representatives (mostly IT-related).[23] By party affiliation, the faction consists mostly out of unaffiliated deputies, while there is one deputy of theUkrainian People's Party and only three members of the Self Reliance party.[23]
The top ten members of parliament wereHanna Hopko,Semen Semenchenko,Oleksiy Skrypnyk,Oksana Syroyid,Viktor Kryvenko,Iryna Suslova,Pavlo Kyshkar,Aliona Babak,Natalia Veselova andOleksandr Danchenko.
Following the elections the party became a member of the coalition supporting the currentsecond Yatsenyuk Government and it had one minister in this government,Minister of Agrarian Policy and FoodOleksiy Pavlenko.[24][25][26]
Hopko and Kryvenko were expelled from Self Reliance on 31 August 2015 for violating faction discipline, as they supported the amendments to theUkrainian Constitution that would lead todecentralization and greater powers for the pro-Russian separatists on the territory they occupied during theWar in Donbas.[27][28] By late October 2015, the Self Reliance faction in the Rada had shrunk from 33 seats to 26 seats.[8]
The party did not do particularly well in the2015 Ukrainian local elections (winning approximately 10% of the votes); but its candidateOleksandr Senkevych was elected Mayor ofMykolayiv in the elections.[29][30] But the following years party factions in city councils dissolved themselves, some factions rebranded themselves to a new local party (as happened to the party'sKyiv City Council andKyiv Oblast Council factions) and party deputies transferred to other factions.[2]
On 4 February 2016, leader of Self Reliance parliamentary factionOleh Berezyuk said Pavlenko no longer represented his party in the second Yatsenyuk Government.[24]
On 17 February 2016, after a supported by the party but failed motion of no confidence against the government, Self Reliance issued an official statement on itsFacebook page in which it argued "A cynical coup has occurred in Ukraine, with the help of the president, the prime minister, the kleptocratic part of the coalition, and the oligarch bloc" that led to the second Yatsenyuk government being an "illegitimate government".[31] The next day Self Reliance left the coalition.[32][31]
The party did not join the coalition that supports 14 April 2016 installedGroysman Government.[33]
From Autumn 2015 until June 2016, party members were engaged in talks on an attempt to form a political party around then Governor of Odesa OblastMikheil Saakashvili with members of the parliamentary groupInterfactional Union "Eurooptimists",Democratic Alliance and possibly Self Reliance until this projection collapsed in June 2016.[34]
Self Reliance announced on 3 October 2018 that party leaderAndriy Sadovyi would be their candidate in the2019 Ukrainian presidential election.[35] He indeed became a candidate in the election from 8 January[36] until 1 March 2019, when he decided to withdraw to support the candidacy ofAnatoliy Hrytsenko.[37] In these elections, Hrytsenko did not proceed to the second round of the election; in the first round, he placed fifth with 6.91% of the votes.[38]
In April and May 2019, seven members of the party's parliamentary faction left the party but remained in the Self Reliance faction.[39]
In the July2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election, 13 of the party's incumbent MPs were on the Self Reliance party list, while four incumbent Self Reliance MPs tried to get reelected for the partyVoice, another four forStrength and Honor and one forServant of the People.[40] In the parliamentary election, Self Reliance won one seat (in one of the electoral constituencies) while only scoring 0.62% of the national vote.[11][41] Self Reliance candidatePavlo Bakunets won their only parliamentary seat by winning the electoral district ofYavoriv with 14.84% of the votes.[42][43]
In October 2019, the former party leader Sadovyi was succeeded byOksana Syroyid.[1]
In the2020 Ukrainian local elections, the party did not make the top 10 of winners of the election; thus, she scored less than the 1.62% of the available seats won by theRadical Party of Oleh Lyashko.[44] In total, the party gained 223 deputies (0.52% of all available mandates) in the elections.[45] The party won nine of the 84 seats of theLviv Oblast Council (the winner in this election with 28 seats wasEuropean Solidarity)[46] and 17 of the 64 seats in theLviv City Council (coming second to European Solidarity's 26 seats) and Sadovy wasreelected mayor of Lviv in the second round of the Lviv mayoral election with 62.25% of the vote (he had gained 40.09% in the first round).[47][48]
According to former party leaderAndriy Sadovyi, Self Reliance shares theliberal conservatism ideology,[49] butTimofiy Mylovanov of theUniversity of Pittsburgh disagrees, claiming,[nb 1] "They have no ideology. Some of their laws areconservative, some arepopulist, and some areliberal".[49]
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| Year | Popular vote | % of popular vote | Overall seats won | Seat change | Government |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 1,727,744 | 10.98 | 33 / 450 | New | Coalition (2014−2016) |
| Opposition (2016−2019) | |||||
| 2019 | 91,740 | 0.62 | 1 / 450 |  32 | Opposition |
| Year | Popular vote | % of popular vote | Overall seats won | Seat change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 155,337 | 14.77 | 14 / 84 | New |
| 2020 | 67,266 | 8.71 | 9 / 84 | 5 |
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