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THE FUTURE OF VIKTOR YUSHCHENKO AND POLITICAL CRISIS IN UKRAINE
VADIM KARASYOV, VITALY PORTNIKOV,
Kyiv
Vadim KARASYOV, Director of the Institute of Global Strategies, Kyiv
Among all Ukrainian top politicians only President Viktor Yushchenko regards the presidency as an opportunity to realize the nation-building project. For Yuliya Tymoshenko and Viktor Yanukovych, the presidency is the project of seizing supreme power. In other words, they see the presidency as a goal rather than a tool. Tymoshenko and Yanukovych are effective and popular policy-makers and party leaders. But unlike Viktor Yushchenko they are not statespersons.
What is the difference between a statesman and a politician? A statesman, even if he is not popular now, can gain wide popularity in the future, while a popular politician who has no national project can lose his or her rating quickly.
In Ukraine only Viktor Yushchenko demonstrates statesmanship and has a historical vision of presidency, but he is unpopular now, which is quite explainable. The idea of the Ukrainian nation is not consistent with the divided country (the same is true for Georgia). Ukraine is a country of minorities, which are forced to create the parliamentary majority. This is the disadvantage that keeps causing the permanent political crisis in the country.
Before discussing the future of Viktor Yushchenko within the framework of the current political crisis in Ukraine, there is a need to say a couple of words about his presidency.
In 2004 Ukraine must have finished its post-Soviet development. Russia did that in 2000, when Vladimir Putin came to power.
Any president of Ukraine, who would have come to power in 2004, should have decided what policy the state would follow after the finishing of Ukraine’s post-Soviet development. A new leader should face new challenges. Viktor Yushchenko chose the nation building project. However, he had no enough powers to implement it. Since 2006 Viktor Yushchenko has had neither parliamentary majority nor loyal Cabinet of Ministers.
But I believe that Yushchenko’s situation is not hopeless. Everything will depend on how the election campaign will be conducted. If Yuliya Tymoshenko concludes an official coalition agreement with the Party of Regions, she may lose the support of the West Ukrainian electors who will vote for Yushchenko again. If Tymoshenko does not conclude the agreement with Viktor Yanukovych and three major political forces take part in the elections, Yuschchenko will have every chance of taking about 15 percent of the vote and then the main intrigue will take place in 2009-2010.
VITALY PORTNIKOV, “Svoboda” broadcasting station’s observer, Kyiv
Viktor Yushchenko’s high popularity rating in 2004 was based neither on the nation building project, nor on the study of the Cucuteni-Tripolie archeological culture, from which the Ukrainian people is said to descend, nor on the condemnation of the Great Famine (Holodomor) in Ukraine. During his premiership in 1999-2001 he was the first Prime Minister in the independent Ukraine who paid off arrears of wages and pensions. So, he was the first social Premier who in 2004 was expected to become the first social President. What did he promise when running for President in 2004? He promised the people wellbeing and prosperity. He also promised to fight against corruption, to create favorable conditions for the development of small business and many other things that were supposed to improve the ordinary people’s living. Viktor Yushchenko’s high rating was based on the broad social programmes of his election campaign. The voters regarded him as, above all, a successful economist and banker.
Did he position himself as an anti-Russian presidential candidate? No, he didn’t, except in the propaganda of his political opponents and the Russian mass media maybe. Yushchenko himself tried his best to show that he wanted good relations with Russia. As the Prime Minister of Ukraine, he made such unprecedented concessions to maintain friendly relations with Russia that no Ukraine’s Premier has ever made.
Yushchenko’s opponents said: “He is against Russia. He hates Russia. He wants Ukraine to join NATO to defend it from Russia”. Viktor Yushchenko and his adherents denied those accusations. But Yushchenko’s position during the recent Russian-Georgian conflict indicates that all his previous projects, which were aimed at improving relations with Russia, are fading. Now Yushchenko is associated only with his anti-Russian project, while Yuliya Tymoshenko has become the social leader of Ukraine instead of him.
As a matter of fact, her position is the same as Yushchenko made public in 2004. She is a European-oriented politician and opposes the confrontation with Russia. Apart from that, she advocates improving the wellbeing of the people, fighting corruption, in a word all those things Yushchenko supported in 2004.
Currently there are a few people in Ukraine backing Viktor Yushchenko’s nation building and cultural project, and if the early elections were called the votes could be distributed, in the main, between the Party of Regions and Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc.
I am not sure that the early parliamentary elections will take place in Ukraine. I concede that the Party of Regions and Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc can come to an agreement with each other in the Parliament and form a coalition that will exist till the next elections. It can be called “the coalition of national reconciliation” or “the stability coalition”. Those politicians will decide that the general presidential elections divide the country and they will not be held any more. Then Viktor Yanukovych will be nominated Ukraine's President, Yuliya Tymoshenko will become Prime Minister and Viktor Yushchenko will be sidelined.
But Yushchenko can avert that, calling the presidential elections. Undoubtedly, he will lose them. In that case, Tymoshenko will be elected as President, and Yanukovych will become Prime Minister. This makes almost no difference.
Does Viktor Yushchenko have any allies in this struggle? Yes, he does. Surprisingly, the two previous Presidents of Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk and Leonid Kuchma won the presidential elections thanks to the East Ukrainian voters and, later on, they gained the Western Ukraine’s support. On the contrary, Viktor Yushchenko was elected by the Western and Central Ukraine and he won the Eastern electorate's favour without changing ideologically. In terms of ideology, he continues to be the President of the Central and Western Ukraine, but he has got support from the businessmen from the Southeast of Ukraine, first and foremost, from Rinat Akhmetov and Boris Kolesnikov, Ukrainian tycoons who are the sponsors of Viktor Yanukovych's Party of Regions. Yushchenko has come to realize that he should be the President of only the rich Ukrainians, which helped him to remain in power. But it is worse to be the President of the rich Ukrainians than the President of all the Ukrainians, since, unlike the rich Ukrainians, the ordinary Ukrainians do not dupe you. And rich people, when seeing that Yushchenko is unable to preserve their capital, seek to find a replacement for him.
For all that, Yushchenko’s future positive role is that he can prevent the state from becoming authoritarian. The coalition of Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc and the Party of Regions would be an ideal pattern existing in Russia: effective Prime Minister (in Russia – Vladimir Putin, in Ukraine - Yuliya Tymoshenko), respected President (in Russia – Dmitry Medvedev, in Ukraine – Viktor Yanukovych) and security of the financial and industrial groups that came to terms with those political forces.
The material is based on the experts’ addresses to Moscow-Kyiv television bridge “The future of Viktor Yushchenko and political crisis in Ukraine” organized by the Russian Agency of International Information RIA Novosti on September 10.
September 16, 2008
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