Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am genuinely excited and honoured to be here. The last time I was here was almost nine years ago, when I was with the presidential candidate, Viktor Yushchenko. We were attending question period and the government was responding to difficult questions. We really enjoyed the atmosphere.
I could not have imagined what would happen afterwards—how Viktor Yushchenko's campaign would proceed, how he would be almost killed by poisoning, and how his major rival would become the next President of Ukraine. It would have been impossible for me to imagine. It just proved how relatively speedy the development of life is, and how we can find ourselves unexpectedly in many positions. I couldn't imagine that nine years after the Orange Revolution I would be talking about the state of democracy and civil society in Ukraine. I'm proud to talk about this, and to talk about what happens in my country today.
Internationally speaking, you are aware that Ukraine is practically ready to initial a long-awaited agreement with the European Union on political association and free trade. We are ready to initial. It's technically done, but everyone in Europe is saying that unless there is much progress in democracy, we can forget about ratification of the agreement.
We are progressing on a similar agreement with Canada. Your Prime Minister has stated that because the opposition leaders are in jail, it would be difficult make an agreement unless things change. Yesterday, Putin again became President of Russia. This does not augur well for my government or for President Yanukovych, who was campaigning with the slogan of better relations with Russia. We can predict that pressure for Ukraine to become a member of the Eurasian Union, as Mr. Putin loves to put it, will only increase. In his first statement, Mr. Putin says that the CIS, or what remained after the Soviet Union, would be his priority. In that strategy, Ukraine is the number one target.
Domestically, we have little to be proud of. The first election after two years of the Yanukovych presidency was an election of local authorities. Local elections have had a serious setback, and the world didn't recognize them as democratic. There is backsliding on democracy according to all the international partners of Ukraine. There are problems with freedom of speech. Civil society, which I represent today, sees more and more pressure from secret services to control its activity. Peaceful assembly is getting more and more difficult.
It is interesting that for the first time in 20 years of independence the party that now represents a majority in Parliament is losing votes. Those votes are not coming to the opposition. Roughly 40% of Ukrainians support neither the government nor the opposition. This is something we have to think about. The opposition in any country is not always united. I remember a German joke saying that there are three types of animosity: just enemies, blood enemies, and members of a coalition. I guess this is something universal.
The biggest challenge is that many Ukrainians do not actually believe that the opposition, even if it's united, is an alternative to the government. This corresponds to our own experience. What happens in civil society today is that there are many attempts for civil society to initiate and to put forth a totally different quality of politician to come back to power.
But how to do that is another question. What we are trying to do is to make politicians accountable, specifically the opposition, because there are high hopes that the opposition can really be an alternative to power. If you call yourself an alternative, you have to be accountable. You have to be very clear on what basis you are finding candidates for the next election and what makes you different from government.
We have a broad public movement called Chesna, or Honesty, and that movement calls for all members or candidates for parliamentary membership to meet six core democratic values, which could help voters see that these are really things that remind us that there is an alternative to the present government. Many civil campaigns are aimed at changing the mindset of voters, because it is clear that if voters do not change their minds, it's impossible to have new types of politicians coming to power in Ukraine.
In this regard, we really appreciate having this opportunity to talk to you today, to talk to the members of Parliament of the country that was the first to recognize our independence, the country that is well known in the Ukraine as a country with a strong and independent foreign policy. I'm specifically grateful—and if I may, on behalf of all Ukrainians here today, I will express our sincere gratitude—to Mr. Dechert for initiating these hearings. I know there will be some Ukrainian politicians talking to your committee in a few days, and therefore it's a great opportunity for us also, in a very frank exchange of views, to answer some of your questions.
Thank you.