JOHN MARONE, KYIV
UKRAINE’S PROCESS OF POLITICAL ELIMINATION
In 2004, as the country readied itself to elect a new president, one who would replace the thoroughly disgraced Leonid Kuchma, there was a feeling that most ordinary and well-placed Ukrainians were gradually falling into line behind the then young and reform-minded hopeful, Viktor Yushchenko.
Now, as presidential elections approach once again, the feeling is that ordinary voters are sitting on the sidelines with indifference, while their well-placed politicians pick each other off like birds on a fence.
If there is one thing that Mr. Yushchenko has proven that he cannot do, it’s build and maintain an effective team.
The list of the president’s enemies and naysayers grows every week, in inverse proportion to his ratings in public opinion polls.
The Yushchenko years will surely be remembered as a time of conflict, chaos and wasted opportunity to implement meaningful change.
The president’s supporters (few as they may be) would argue that such are the side effects of democracy building.
Indeed, Mr. Yushchenko has been steadfast in his efforts to revive a Ukrainian national identity and forge that identity to the West.
The alternative to the president’s methods or lack thereof is top-down populism in braids, i.e. Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
Another icon from the country’s 2004 Orange Revolution, Ms. Tymoshenko has developed a reputation for strength, as opposed to the president’s reputation for weakness.
If Ukraine were Britain of the 1930s (which it isn’t by a long shot), then Yulia would be Churchill and Viktor would be Chamberlain.
Together they represent the two faces of democracy – Orange Ukrainian democracy.
Apart, they represent a never-ending dissent that has continually threatened to reverse all the democratic and market reforms achieved since Mr. Kuchma left office.
Although Tymoshenko is clearly a more decisive leader than Yushchenko, she isn’t any better at team building: at least not outside of her party.
Free of Czars, commissars and post-Soviet thugs, Ukraine has become a political free-for-all.
It’s as if all the guys in power (forget the conspiracy theories about Russian meddling) like living without laws or any other rules of conduct.
Instead, they just make up the rules along the way, among themselves and for their own benefit.
Only now these ‘elites’ have another pesky election coming up – not a parliamentary one, which actually provides a great venue for all the participants in the free-for-all, but one that’s supposed to put just one person in executive power.
A single executive means authority and, at least theoretically, accountability. The former is just too tempting to pass up, much less let someone else have, while the latter is something for the election losers to nag about.
Therefore, as the presidential election date nears, more and more free-for-all participants are getting knocked out of the game.
Kuchma was the undisputed king of the hill, who both Yushchenko and his eastern-looking opponent Viktor Yanukovych tried to replace.
Yushchenko has had a hard of enough time holding onto his presidential authorities over the last five years, much less acting like a monarch.
And there probably aren’t many among the country’s so-called business and political elite that want another king anyway.
That’s why the little guy in the glasses, Mr. Arseny Yatseniuk, is getting a lot of support for his candidacy lately.
More a technocrat than a Hetman, Yatseniuk would be even more vulnerable to Oligarchs’ demands than Yushchenko, whose ‘messiah’ wings were clipped by some last minute changes to the constitution before he became president.
The former parliament speaker, foreign minister and (like Yushchenko) national banker is even being backed by Yushchenko’s former supporters: Gas middleman Dmitry Firtash and Kuchma’s son-in-law turned philanthropist Viktor Pinchuk.
Yatseniuk is also doing well in the polls, coming up fast behind Ms. Tymoshenko.
Some say, he could cut a deal with Tymoshenko to support her in the final round against Yanukovych or support her now and become premier. But such a scenario is unlikely given Yatseniuk’s backing from Tymoshenko’s arch enemy Firtash.
On other hand, generous financial support may not be enough to compensate for the advantages of Tymoshenko’s and Yanukovych’s campaign experience, disciplined teams and extensive party networks.
It’s these teams, or rather individual members, however, who are in the process of getting picked off.
With ratings in the single digits, Yushchenko has never been given much of a chance at a re-election anyway. But now that his chief of staff Viktor Baloga has resigned, slamming the door in the president’s face as he left, Mr. Yushchenko can all but call it quits. It wasn’t so long ago that Yushchenko, faced with criticism of his public pit bull, declared: Baloga speaks for me. Indeed, the master of intrigues had a few words to say about his former master when he resigned last week: "I am convinced that you [Yushchenko] have no moral right to stand in the presidential elections. In any case, I will not be your associate in this.”
In terms of birds being picked off on the fence, Baloga’s resignation counts as two with one stone.
On the other side of the fence, occupied by presidential hopeful Yulia Tymoshenko, her Interior Minister Yury Lutsenko came under a hail of rocks and pebbles recently.
During the May holidays, Mr. Lutsenko and his adult son were reportedly detained by German police for resisting the attempts of a German aircrew to keep the VIP Ukrainians from boarding a plane drunk.
Last year, the top cop was almost dismissed for assaulting the mayor of Kyiv in public.
Although Lutsenko tendered his resignation this time around, followed by vociferous demands in parliament that he be fired, the whole affair seems to have been settled in talks between the factions of Tymoshenko [Lutsenko’s patron] and Yanukovych [who called for his resignation].
Tymoshenko lost another bird, though, earlier this year when Finance Minister Viktor Pynzenyk resigned in the heat of the country’s financial crisis.
More recently, the Ukrainian femme fatale has been shooting for the last of Yushchenko’s cabinet choices - Defense Minister Yury Yekhanurov.
And although the gun battle between Yushchenko and Tymoshenko commands most of the public attention, Yanukovych is far from sitting pretty.
Having let the presidency and then the prime minister’s post slip from his hands, he is said to have lost the faith of Moscow and his party’s money bags, tycoon Rinat Akhmetov.
The Donetsk-based Party of Regions could well be a spent force, split between its industrialists and pro-Russian hardliners.
The Regions too has had some of its members picked off but with real guns in alleged hunting accidents and supposed suicides.
As election day nears – whether it is held in January or October, we can expect more Ukrainian politicians to fall from grace or just fall, as such are the rules of the free-for-all. There’s no guarantee that the mild-mannered Mr. Yatseniuk will remain standing when it’s all over, but it would also be hard to imagine one of the country’s less flexible political figures taking over the country’s top executive position.
John Marone, a columnist of Eurasian Home website, Kyiv, Ukraine
May 27, 2009
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