Self Reliance (political party)

The contemporary history of the political party Self Reliance started in 2004, with the creation of an NGO 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 of Lviv. 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 first constituent assembly in the Building of Pedagogical Museum in Kyiv.[16] The party started to form local representation units and develop ideological approach. Self Reliance activists participated in Euromaidan.

Self Reliance participated in the 25 May 2014 elections to the Kyiv 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]

Self Reliance party conference in Kyiv in the lead up to the 2014 elections

On 28 February 2014, the party's leader Andriy Sadovyi, said Self Reliance would take part in the snap parliamentary elections scheduled for October 2014.[20] In the Ukrainian parliamentary election Hanna Hopko headed the party list, followed by Donbas Battalion commander Semen 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 community NGOs and medium-sized businesses.[14][21] Candidates of Volia were included in the election list of Self Reliance.[22] Its parliamentary faction received 33 mandates including one won at constituency 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 the Ukrainian People's Party and only three members of the Self Reliance party.[23]

The top ten members of parliament were Hanna Hopko, Semen Semenchenko, Oleksiy Skrypnyk, Oksana Syroyid, Viktor Kryvenko, Iryna Suslova, Pavlo Kyshkar, Aliona Babak, Natalia Veselova and Oleksandr Danchenko.

Following the elections the party became a member of the coalition supporting the current second Yatsenyuk Government and it had one minister in this government, Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food Oleksiy 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 the Ukrainian Constitution that would lead to decentralization and greater powers for the pro-Russian separatists on the territory they occupied during the War in Donbass.[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 the 2015 Ukrainian local elections (winning approximately 10% of the votes); but its candidate Oleksandr Senkevych was elected Mayor of Mykolayiv 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's Kyiv City Council and Kyiv Oblast Council factions) and party deputies transferred to other factions.[2]

On 4 February 2016, leader of Self Reliance parliamentary faction Oleh 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 its Facebook 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 installed Groysman 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 Oblast Mikheil Saakashvili with members of the parliamentary group Interfactional 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 leader Andriy Sadovyi would be their candidate in the 2019 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 of Anatoliy Hrytsenko.[37] In these election 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 7 members of the party's parliamentary faction left the party but remained in the Self Reliance faction.[39]

In the July 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election 13 of the party's incumbent MPs were on the Self Reliance party list while 4 incumbent Self Reliance MPs tried to get reelected for the party Voice, another 4 for Strength and Honor and 1 for Servant of the People.[40] In the parliamentary election Self Reliance won 1 seat (in one of the electoral constituencies) while only scoring 0.62% of the national vote.[11][41] Self Reliance candidate Pavlo Bakunets won their only parliamentary seat by winning the electoral district of Yavoriv with 14.84% of the votes.[42][43]

In October 2019, the former party leader Sadovyi was succeeded by Oksana Syroyid.[1]

In the 2020 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 the Radical Party of Oleh Lyashko.[44] In total in the elections the party gained 223 deputies (0.52% of all available mandates).[45] The party won 9 of the 84 seats of the Lviv Oblast Council (the winner in this election with 28 seats was European Solidarity)[46] and 17 of the 64 seats in the Lviv City Council (coming second to European Solidarity's 26 seats) and Sadovy was reelected 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]