Experts estimate that opening up the land market could bring Ukraine up to $ 10.57 billion in GDP growth over 3-5 years and up to 1.86% in additional annual GDP growth over 5 years. For comparison, in 2017 and 2018, GDP grew by 2.47% and 3.36%, respectively. However, influential interest groups are opposed to opening up the land market organizing media campaigns and mass political actions.
In recent weeks, Parliament has considered over 4,000 proposed amendments to the land bill. Such a large number of amendments is one of the ways to significantly complicate the bill’s adoption, if not burying it. Does Parliament have a critical number of people supporting or at least not opposing the land reform? We tried to find out using the FB posts written by MPs.
We analyzed each post trying to determine whether its author supported the land market. If yes, does he or she support opening up the land market to foreigners? Does he or she support the restrictions on land concentration in one pair of hands?.. etc. There is more detail in the “How we counted” section.
Who of the MPs write the most about land?
The top 3 “heralds of the land market” are (Fig. 1):
- Vadym Ivchenko, the Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party, 140 posts against the land market (however, this MP supported the land market before the introduction of the government bill)
- Dmytro Kostiuk, the Servant of the People party, 42 posts in favor of the land market
- Nataliia Korolevska, the Opposition Platform – For Life (OPFL) party, 33 posts against the land market
Figure 1. Distribution of the posts by the MPs most active on the land issue, by category
Source: our own calculations
Which factions support the land market?
By comparing the MPs writing “in favor” or “against” the market it is possible to determine the position of the faction. Although Fig.2 shows that the factions may have “renegades”, overall, the position of the faction can be determined quite clearly.
They are as follows:
- Servant of the People (SoP) – in favor of the market
- OPFL – against the market (in favor of a referendum on the land market)
- Batkivshchyna – against the market (in favor of a referendum on the land market)
- European Solidarity (ES) – in favor of the market (against the bill under consideration by Parliament)
- Holos (Voice) – in favor of the market (against the bill under consideration by Parliament)
- Ggroup For Future – against the market (in favor of a referendum on the land market)
- Ggroup Dovira (Trust) – in favor of the market
Non-factional MPs are mostly opposed to the land market.
However, there were exceptions within the factions and groups:
- MP Stepan Cherniavskyi (SoP) in one of his 6 posts wrote about the need for a referendum on the land market. Although before and after that he did not write in favor of or against it. In his three posts he stands for the land market.
- Oleksandr Dubinskyi (SoP) is in favor of a referendum on the land market (contrary to his faction’s position).
- Oleksiy Honcharenko (ES) holds a contradictory position regarding the market: 12 of his posts belong in the category “against” the market with the other 10 “in favor”.
Figure 2. Distribution of the posts by category, by factions and groups
Source: our own calculations
Prior to the government bill on the land market being introduced in Parliament, the Batkivshchyna was not openly opposed to it, even being supportive of the idea of the land market, though with a delay of over a year. But after the government submitted the bill, its position changed in favor of a referendum on the launch of the land market.
“Batkivshchyna has developed a plan for civilized circulation of land that contains a mandatory 2-year moratorium, during which the government must hand the land to territorial communities, carry out an inventory, introduce a tax on 1 hectare of land, adopt an anti-raiding law and one with regard to land for permanent use, and legalize individual farms.” (Vadym Ivchenko, Batkivshchyna, September 23, 2019)
Audience’s reaction
To measure audience engagement with the posts, we added the number of likes, comments and shared posts about land issues comparing them with the average number on each MP’s page. Only those pages (90 in total) were selected in which the number of land-related publications exceeded 3% of the total.
On 16 pages out of 90 the land-related posts garnered more reactions than on average on the page, i.e. 2% or more. Of these 16 pages, 7 belong to the members of the SoP faction, 4 to Batkivshchyna, 2 to OPFL, and 1 to ES, group Dovira, and Svoboda respectively.
We assume that bots are active on the MPs’ pages but we do not study them in this article. The land-related posts are not very popular (Fig. 3). Therefore, we can assume that even if someone uses the bots, it is not with regard to the posts about land issues.
Figure 3. Average number of reactions for all posts and the posts about land
Source: our own calculations
Findings:
1.Personal publications by MPs do not differ from the general positions of their parties, except in a few cases: O.Dubinskyi (SoP), S.Cherniavskyi (SoP), and O.Honcharenko (ES).
- The Batkivshchyna originally supported the land market but moved into opposition to the SoP on this issue after the bill by the Cabinet of Ministers was submitted to Parliament.
- The posts on the land reform are not very popular. Out of the 90 pages with at least 3% of the land market-related posts, the publications garnered more reactions (likes + comments + shares) than on average on the page only on 17 pages.
How we counted:
Over the span of 120 days – from August 29, 2019 to January 10, 2020 – the MPs published around 26 thousand posts on their FB pages. We analyzed 322 verified private and public pages of the MPs. We considered the following data by factions/groups: SoP – 173 pages, OPFL – 12, Batkivshchyna – 10, ES – 15, Holos – 17, Dovira – 9, For Future – 15, and non-fractional – 15.
Of 26,000 posts, we singled out 1,133 posts related in some way to the land market. On average, the MPs published 6.2 posts on the land market each (including video publications).
To analyze the parlamentarians’ position we considered their publications and attached articles. Videos with introductory texts that could not clearly identify them as supportive of a particular idea were left out of this analysis. Therefore, the analysis of the positions of the MPs was based on 965 publications sorted out as presented in Table 1.
Table 1. Classification of the MPs’ posts
| Are you in favor of the land market? | ||||||||||
| Yes | No | Impossible to determine | ||||||||
| Are you in favor of selling land to foreigners? | Are you supportive of restricting concentration of land in one pair of hands? | No reservations | No reservations | Referendum | Untimely | Description of events | Hard to determine | |||
| Complete permission or with restrictions – 53 | Ban or referendum – 91 | Less than 10,000 ha – 26 | Over 10,000 ha – 19 | Area not specified | 246 | 118 | 125 | 16 | 291 | 12 |
| Not in favor of the current bill – 49 | ||||||||||
To make the Table easier to read, you should imagine each post as “coming in” from above and further falling into one of the cells while “answering” the questions in passing
Within the category “In favor of land market”, one publication may have several codings, e.g. an individual may simultaneously be supportive of the sale of land to foreigners and opposed to the current bill.
We thank CrowdTangle (Facebook) for helping us with data collection.
Key characteristics of representative groups of FB posts (classification according to Table 1)
The group in favor of the land market
The MPs within this group most often simply speak in favor of the land market (62% of the group “In favor of the market”) without specifying their position with regard to foreigners or the limit of land concentration in one pair of hands.
“The Holos faction in Parliament is in favor of regulating the land market and settling this issue. But the land reform must first and foremost protect the rights of smallholders, and representatives of small and medium farms in Ukraine.” (Solomiia Boblovska, Holos)
23% of the “pro-market” group are in favor of banning foreigners in any form from buying farmland, or by putting this question to a referendum (most likely with negative results).
“Specifically, it is not clear at the moment how many Ukrainian legal entities, the ultimate beneficiaries of which are Ukrainians, will be restricted from selling their corporate rights to foreign investors. After all, only a referendum should be the starting point of whether or not foreigners get the right to buy Ukrainian farmland.” (Ihor Fris, Servant of the People)
There are 12% of those in favor of the land market and of letting foreigners buy farmland at least in some form, e.g. if the foreigner is the ultimate beneficiary of a Ukrainian company. At the same time, the same deputies may also support a referendum on allowing foreigners to own land.
“Citizens of Ukraine, territorial communities, the state and legal entities registered under Ukrainian law will be able to buy land. The issue of the sale of land to foreigners and legal entities that have citizens of other countries will be put to a referendum.” (Oleksiy Movchan, Servant of the People)
The posts on restrictions on the number of hectares concentrated in one pair of hands of up to and equaling 10 thousand hectares constituted 6.5%, over that number – 2.3%. In 3.5% of the posts, the MPs were in favor of reducing the concentration of land in one pair of hands without specifying to what number.
In 12% posts by the MPs, they were in favor of the land market but opposed to the government bill.
The group opposing the land market
We referred here to the posts in which MPs were opposed to the land market demanding that this issue be put to a referendum or postponed for later (for over a year, or after some complex conditions have been fulfilled, e.g. “adjustments to the judicial and law enforcement system”) .
“Today, the issue of the sale of land should be removed from the agenda, the moratorium on its sale should be extended, and there should be an all-Ukrainian referendum on this issue. This is our position which we will defend!” (Nataliia Korolevska, OPFL)
“After all, they (the Servant of the People – Ed.) seek one thing – to open up the land market and let in speculators and banks that will buy farmland for a tiny price.” (Oksana Savchuk, a majoritarian from the party All-Ukrainian Union «Svoboda»)
Description of events without specifying any position
Description of events around the land market. Such posts may include the passing of the bills on the land market, discussing them with their voters, etc. MPs often post about their communication with people regarding the land market but without specifying their position.
“The Agrarian Committee meeting will begin in an hour. In my hands (in the photo – Ed.), are the amendments to Law 2178-10 on the land market. A total of 4970 edits, 1953 pages … How long do you think it takes to review them?” (Vadym Ivchenko, Batkivshchyna)
“I learned about the main issues of concern to the residents of Snovschyna, specifically opening up the land sales.” (Maksym Zuyev, SoP)
Difficult to determine
In this category of posts, the MPs express opinions on the land market but it is difficult to determine their exact position from such posts.
“In my opinion, the government will not slow down their decisions on the land market, privatization of large enterprises, etc., because all these things are required by the World Bank to continue cooperation with Ukraine. Should the implementation in these areas come to a halt, so will the support. And I’m not ready to say right now whether Ukrainian economy can sustain itself without cash inflows from the World Bank.” (Vadym Ivchenko, Batkivshchyna)
Clone posts
Some MPs periodically copy-paste posts from the pages of other MPs, parties or other bodies without attribution. There were 16 such land-related posts (here we do not take into account the posts copied partially and containing the MP’s own reasoning or those copied with attribution). MP Dmytro Lyubota (SoP) copied the posts from other pages most frequently (mainly from the page of the Servant of the People) with a total of 11 such posts. Two posts were copied by Olexandr Pasichnyi (SoP), one by Nestor Shufrych (OPFL) and Andriy Bohdanets (SoP). We also found identical posts written as personal (i.e. in first person) by MPs (SoP) Kasay and Kolyev (the latter’s post appeared nearly 4 hours later):
Attention
The author doesn`t work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have no relevant affiliations
