Leader Pavlo Lazarenko Headquarters Kiev International affiliation None | Founded 1994 Political position Centre-left | |
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Ideology Social democracy
Populism | ||
All-Ukrainian Association "Community" (Ukrainian: Всеукраїнське об'єднання «Громада», Vseukrainske obiednannia "Hromada"), simply known as Hromada, is a Ukrainian political party registered in March 1994 and reregistered in March 2005. Party leader is former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko.
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The party is a former parliamentary party in 1998 - 2002 and since then unsuccessfully participated in national elections.
History
In 1994 the party was created by Oleksandr Turchynov together with Lazarenko.
At the 1998 elections the party won 24 seats in the Ukrainian parliament (Verkhovna Rada), mainly because of its good results in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. The party won 4.7% of the votes and 16 proportional seats 8 individual seats the Verkhovna Rada (half of the 450 parliament seats were filled by single-seat majority winners in 225 territorial election regions, and the other half were split among political parties and blocks, which received at least 4% popular vote).
When Lazarenko fled to the United States in the spring of 1999 to avoid investigations for embezzlement various faction members left the party to join other parliament faction including the later Prime Minister of Ukraine Yulia Tymoshenko who set up the All-Ukrainian Union "Fatherland" faction.
The Hromada faction was disbanded in the Ukrainian parliament on February 29, 2000 because it was unable to meet the minimum requirement of fourteen members.
The party did not participate in the 2002 elections.
Lazarenko Bloc
At the 2006 elections Hromada participated in the "Lazarenko Bloc" (Ukrainian: Блок Лазаренка), which consisted of Hromada, Social Democratic Union and Social Democratic Party of Ukraine, but this bloc was supported by only 76.950 voters, or 0.30%, and therefore did not make it to parliament. But the block reached third place in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast council elections of 2006. Pavlo Lazarenko's brother, Ivan Lazarenko, is vice-chairman of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast council and the party itself governed the city in an alliance with the Party of Regions.
In the 2007 elections the party did not take part because the Central Election Commission of Ukraine refused to register candidates of Hromada as candidates because Hromada did not notify the Central Election Commission of the right date of its congress. The party planned to participate in the elections (again) in an election bloc with the Social Democratic Union. Social Democratic Union did not participate in the 2007 election either.
Since 2007
During the 2010 Ukrainian local elections the party won 2 representatives in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Council (regional parliament). In the council of Dnipropetrovsk the party lost all its seats. In the 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary election the party won 0.08% of the national votes and no constituencies (it had competed in four constituencies) and thus failed to win parliamentary representation. The Central Election Commission of Ukraine had refused Pavlo Lazarenko's registration for this election (he had been chosen to head the election list of the party).
The party did participate in the 2012 parliamentary elections in 4 simple-majority constituencies but did not win parliamentary representation.
The party did not participate in the 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election.