| Strong Ukraine Сильна Україна |
|
|---|---|
| Leader | Serhiy Tyhypko[1] |
| Founded | June 19, 1999[2] |
| Dissolved | Unknown date yet[3][4] |
| Merged into | Party of Regions |
| International affiliation | None |
| Official colours | Midnight green |
| Website | |
| http://silnaukraina.com | |
| Politics of Ukraine Political parties Elections |
|
Strong Ukraine (Ukrainian: Сильна Україна Syl'na Ukrajina); former Labour Party Ukraine[1] (Ukrainian: Трудова партія України), is a political party in Ukraine registered in August 1999.[1] The party claims to have over 80,000 members as of mid-May 2010.[5] It is currently negotiating a merge with the Party of Regions.[3][4] It is most likely the two parties will merge late January 2012.[6]
Since late 2009 the party was main vehicle of billionaire Serhiy Tihipko.[7] Fellow billionaire Oleksandr Kardakov is another influential member of the party.[8] Tihipko will become a member of the Party of Regions.[9]
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Founded on June 19, 1999[2] as Labour Party Ukraine it did not participate in the legislative elections of 30 March 2002.[1]
In the 2006 elections, the party failed as part of "Bloc Borys Olijnyk and Myhailo Syrota" to win parliamentary representation (the Bloc won 0,08% of the votes).[1]
In the 2007 parliamentary elections the party was part of the Lytvyn Bloc alliance, that won 20 out of 450 seats.[1][10]
On November 28, 2009 at the 10th Congress Labour Party Ukraine was renamed Strong Ukraine.[2]
Strong Ukraine endorsed it's new leader Serhiy Tihipko (former partyleader of Labour Ukraine[11][12]), also elected in November 2009,[13] in the Ukrainian presidential election, 2010.[14]
On February 22, 2010 during a party congress the party announced it would compete in the 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary election not as part of the Lytvyn Bloc but in a electoral alliance with the party Information Ukraine.[15][16]
On March 11, 2010 party leader Tihipko was elected as one of six deputy Prime Ministers (in charge of economic issues[17]) in the Azarov Government.[18]
A March 2010 poll predicted that the party would get 7.3% of the vote at the 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary election.[19] A May 2010 poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology showed that the party had the greatest support among voters in central Ukraine (11%), and least supported in the west and south (7%); the lowest number of this party's supporters was in east Ukraine (5%).[20] At the 2010 local elections the party gained about 6% of the votes nationwide.[7]
In the 2010 local elections the party won representative in 20 of the 24 regional parliaments and in the Supreme Council of Crimea.[21]
In May 2011 the rating of the party had dropped to about 5% in election polls.[22][23]
In August 2011 Tihipko and Prime Minister (and a Party of Regions (POR) leader) Mykola Azarov announced that Strong Ukraine and POR are going to team up and eventually Strong Ukraine will be merged into POR.[24] Tihipko will become a POR member along with other Strong Ukraine representatives.[9][3][4][25] Mid-December 2011 Tihipko predicted the unification process would be completed late January 2012; but he also warned that if "problematic issues" would not be solved Strong Ukraine would not merge.[6]