JOHN MARONE, KYIV
THE TRAGICOMEDY OF UKRAINIAN POLITICAL CONFLICT
A truce has been announced in the seemingly never-ending conflict between Ukraine’s pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko and his Moscow-leaning nemesis, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych – but can anyone take it serious?
Only Saturday, the country was again attracting the attention of international leaders and media, as Interior Ministry troops loyal to President Yushchenko reportedly closed in on the capital.
Two days earlier, the head of the Interior Ministry, a member of Yanukovych’s government and the majority it controls in parliament, had personally stormed the Prosecutor-General’s Office with special police units in an attempt to keep Yushchenko from firing the nation’s top prosecutor.
The country seemed to be headed toward a civil war.
The raid by Interior Minister Vasyl Tsushko, a political appointee, was called the first clash of armed units against one another in Independent Ukraine.
In fact, the special police unit under Tsushko simply broke down the door of the prosecutor-general’s office and pushed out the state guards sent by the president to lock out the top prosecutor.
That was the extent of “the violence.”
Far more violent scuffles between opposing lawmakers in the nation’s parliament are a regular occurrence, while former President Leonid Kuchma unleashed various law-enforcement agencies against his political opponents and peaceful demonstrators on more than one occasion.
Nevertheless, ever since Viktor Yanukovych returned to head the government last summer, the tug of war for executive power between him and President Yushchenko has led the country from one crisis to another, as neither man seems capable of legitimately assuming the position of the nation’s Hetman.
The reform-minded Yushchenko was handed power by the hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters who took part in Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004.
Yanukovych, who represents the country’s Russian-speaking east, went from the villain of the Orange Revolution, on account of his fraud-filled presidential bid, to a largely self-appointed co-president after his party came in first during the 2006 parliamentary elections.
If Ukraine were more authoritarian, like its eastern Slavic neighbor, a strongman like Putin would have firmly taken his place by now.
On the other hand, if the country were closer to the kind of European-style democracy that Yushchenko has vowed to create, transitions of power would be prescribed and conducted according to the law.
But Ukraine seems to be comfortable with its dual if not fickle approach to statehood, as comical as it sometimes seems.
No one denies that the country is a de facto a bilingual east-west bridge, but there are serious doubts about the assumption that it is transforming from Soviet authoritarianism to Western rule of law.
The constitution was vague from the start, allowing former President Leonid Kuchma to assume more authority than anyone expected.
But just as Kuchma was leaving office, then-opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko agreed to a confusing and poorly thought out package of constitutional reforms that are largely responsible for the current legal chaos observed today.
As Yanukovych and his leftist allies in the parliament have tried to muscle away the president’s executive authority, the country’s courts have proven themselves just as partisan and therefore lawless as the rest of the country.
The situation would be laughable if we weren’t talking about the destinies of 46 million people.
And since the nation’s constitution can now be interpreted any way one wants, then conflicts that arise have to be resolved in some other way.
Many of Ukraine’s so-called elite are businessmen with some sort of state position. Several have their own media outlets.
That’s why it’s common to see their little conflicts, or battles, being waged simultaneously in company boardrooms, the parliament and the pages of the country’s numerous tabloids.
The fact that the Orange Revolution polarized all these conflicts into a neat East-West struggle is largely irrelevant.
One need only note how many times the various players switch teams. Prosecutor-General Svyatoslav Piskun, the hero of the latest spiff between Yushchenko and Yanukovych, is an excellent but by no means isolated example.
He was widely criticized during the Kuchma administration by the opposition of the time, including Yushchenko, who ended up keeping him on, firing him, rehiring him and now firing him again.
Appointments and dismissals are also a common weapon in the battle between Ukraine’s elites – if the elite in question are high enough placed.
Upon returning as premier last summer, Yanukovych immediately went about getting rid of Yushchenko’s appointees, including some he had no right to replace.
When Yushchenko finally had enough, on April 2, he fired the parliament, which served as the climax of the two-men’s post Orange-Revolution war (as opposed to the war they fought for the presidency in 2004).
Since April 2, Ukraine watchers have been treated to a rare spectacle of buffoon-like brinkmanship, where the primary victim is the rule of law.
The president passes decrees, and the parliament, which has refused to be dismissed, passes a law that counters the decree.
The president puts one of his people in a key position, only to have the premier’s team question the appointment in a court that goes on to reverse its own decision.
The president goes on television to tell his countrymen what’s happening, and then the premier says just the opposite on another channel.
So while international media and world leaders were calling for calm, as the Interior troops were reportedly headed for the capital on Saturday, it’s no wonder that the average Ukrainian was getting a suntan or watching a football match.
Their self-interested politicians tried to make the three-ring circus interesting, upping the stakes with the threat of an armed conflict. But the show didn’t sell at home.
And why should anyone believe that the president or the premier are willing to advance their supposedly polarized strategic views through the use of force, when the two men have announced an end to their long-running struggle, shaking hands before the nation, on at least three significant occasions in the past year?
This time the two men, together with Socialist speaker Oleksandr Moroz, announced that they would end the standoff by holding snap elections on Sept. 30.
Only a few weeks before, Yanukovych and Yushchenko announced a similar compromise to hold the elections, but didn’t set a date.
Why should anyone believe this time that some other detail won’t derail things again, setting off another comical standoff?
The presence of Moroz this time around certainly is no guarantee.
The Socialist leader stood side by side with Yushchenko during the Orange Revolution against Yanukovych, only to switch sides last summer, allowing Yanukovych to become premier again.
It was Moroz’s fellow Socialist, Interior Minister Tsushko, who called in the riot police to block a presidential order on Thursday, while the Socialist Transport Minister announced dutifully on Saturday that he wouldn’t let trains be used to bring in troops loyal to the president.
And even though a date for fresh elections has been set, what about all the other issues that have popped up during the circus standoff?
Has Piskun been fired yet again or hasn’t he?
And what about Tsushko? He has set a dangerous precedent in challenging a presidential order by means of the police. Should he go unpunished?
Then again, there is nothing unusual about ignoring the law in Ukraine. Yushchenko promised Ukrainians that he would jail the bandits who had rigged the 2004 elections and done other nasty things, but that did not happen.
It’s a favorite Ukrainian pastime to “open criminal cases” against someone, without ever charging them, much less getting a conviction, although some end up spending a few weeks in the slammer only to be released and returned to office down the road.
Indeed, it would be a mistake to believe that no one gets into trouble during the circus performance of Ukrainian political conflict.
President Yushchenko himself had his face disfigured after being poisoned during the 2004 presidential campaign. Others die in “accidents” or commit “suicide.”
That’s why European leaders’ recent expressions of concern were not altogether misplaced.
In addition to the reports of the Interior Troops approaching Kyiv, the president’s team accused Tsushko’s ministry of planning violence against peaceful protesters in Kyiv to create a pretext for seizing power.
Tsushko himself had announced that the Prosecutor-General’s Office had been seized by armed men as a pretext for arriving with the special police units.
But by early Sunday morning, following a marathon round of closed-door negotiations, the president, the premier and the speaker announced a compromise.
Underlining the tragicomedy of Ukrainian politics, the president played down the very threat he had used to force a deal with his opponents, by saying that the 3,500 Interior Troops who were headed for Kyiv had been merely reinforcements for a football match to be held in the capital on Sunday.
Ironically, the match was between teams from Orange Revolution Kyiv and Donetsk, the premier’s power base.
Yushchenko glibly told reporters that he would attend the match with Moroz and Yanukovych, two men whom he had just days before accused of state treachery.
Later on Sunday, Yanukovych, Moroz and the head of the third coalition member, Communist leader Petro Symonenko addressed supporters at a rally in the capital, but the message wasn’t nearly so friendly.
Moroz called his opponents “provocateurs,” Symonenko called for the “liquidation of the presidency” and Yanukovych sowed doubt on the very agreement he’d just struck with Yushchenko.
The premier told his supporters that, “if they (the elections) take place, they should put an end to adventurism and public mockery.”
Unfortunately, the premier’s words only go to show that the mockery and dangerous buffoonery are likely to continue.
Ukraine’s politicians may seem comical to the casual observer as well as the average Ukrainian, but the country is no stranger to tragedy.
One need only recall the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the shoot-down of a passenger jet by the Ukrainian military in 2001, and the 2002 Sknyliv air show crash – the world’s worst.
These tragedies weren’t political, but they were about the same kind of incompetence by officials, disregard for the rules and complacency for the safety of the people that we have seen demonstrated the country’s politicians lately.
John Marone, Kyiv Post Senior Journalist, based in Ukraine.
May 28, 2007
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