JOHN MARONE, KYIV
EU-UKRAINIAN CACOPHONY
When EU leaders visited Kyiv on September 14 for the annual Ukraine-EU Summit, they didn't say a lot that was new. Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, their host, also stuck to his usual, pro-Western rhetoric. Nevertheless, taking place just two weeks before Ukraine's fateful, early parliamentary elections, the summit served as a nice sounding board, revealing the dissonance that remains between Kyiv and Brussels and within Ukraine itself.
As always the Europeans underscored the need for Kyiv to consolidate democracy, strengthen the rule of law and beef up protection of human rights. Since Ukraine's 2004 Orange Revolution, which handed Yushchenko the presidency, democracy has been alive and - well - lively. Unlike under former president Leonid Kuchma, the head of state no longer lords it over everyone else. Instead, the Ukrainian president has been in a seemingly never-ending war with the country's prime minister, Viktor Yanukovych.
Rule of law, always vulnerable, was the first casualty of this war. As for human rights, they’re like war refugees trying to stay out of the line of fire.
Appearing in Ukraine in the run up to what has been billed as the deciding battle, Euro top dogs like Javier Solana and Jose Manuel Barroso reiterated the EU’s unofficial position as a modern-day, regional League of Nations.
The EU’s mandate as European arbiter is bolstered by the carrot of greater integration for its “neighbors”.
"Free and fair early parliamentary elections ... and the formation of an effective and stable government would be the best evidence of the country's ability to accomplish this goal," reads a joint statement from the summit.
Ukraine’s last parliamentary elections in March 2006 were deemed the newly independent nation’s fairest ever. But forming a coalition government proved less successful.
As a result, Orange Revolution hero Yushchenko found himself with Orange Revolution villain Yanukovych as a prime minister.
Now Eurocrats are concerned that Ukraine might regress to the way it held elections in 2004, when it took hundreds of thousands of street protesters to reverse Yanukovych’s fraud-filled presidential victory over Yushchenko.
Mr. Yushchenko tried to allay these concerns.
“In the presence of our European partners, I want to underline my firm guarantee that the early elections will be transparent and in accordance with international standards,” he said on Friday in Kyiv.
Unfortunately, thanks to his own past indecision and lack of team-building skills, Yushchenko is no longer as well placed to guarantee smooth elections.
Yanukovych controls the government. And this means that although Yushchenko may not be as vulnerable as he was as an opposition candidate for the presidency in 2004, he doesn’t wield the same control over the state machine as he did during the March 2006 elections, when his man controlled the government.
Already some of the dirty election tricks of the past, such as home voting and calls for single-seat constituencies, are resurfacing on the initiative of the Regions.
Yanukovych has a solid support base in the country’s Russian speaking east and south, but he could still lose control of the government if the president forms a coalition with popular opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko.
With billions of dollars in privatization deals and state support for the eastern industrialists who back Yanukovych at stake, no one expects him to give up his job without a fight. And the fight might get very dirty.
On the eve of the Summit, Solana told Ukrainian media that Ukraine should be serious about the elections.
In what sounded like a swipe aimed at Yanukovych, Solana criticized a recent attempt by the premier’s team to play the NATO card as a campaign tool.
But Europe isn’t so much interested in the election campaign as it is the election results.
What the EU really wants is a Ukrainian government committed to long delayed reforms in the country’s corrupt VAT system, the sale of agricultural land and a level playing field for smaller businesses and foreign investors.
"It is important to achieve stability for the Ukrainian government to concentrate its energy on reforms," European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said straight out.
In an attempt to portray the summit as an endorsement of his pro-Western policy goals, President Yushchenko ignored his failure at reforms, playing up economic achievements instead.
“I am pleased to note today that even during such a serious parliamentary crisis, the economy has stayed alive, reaching new heights, beginning with a rise in GDP, central bank reserves and levels of imports.”
What the President didn’t note, however, was that the economy is being driven by public consumption and fueled by still relatively cheap Russian gas – both of which are expected to end soon.
The summit delegates reaffirmed their joint strategic interest in energy co-operation, however, despite its promises of lighter visa restrictions and better trade conditions, Europe isn’t helping Ukraine where it counts.
European countries led by EU powerhouse Germany are more interested in cutting individual gas deals with Russia than ensuring alternative energy routes through Ukraine.
Ukraine has definitely got to wean its Soviet era industry off cheap gas, but Europe has done a poor job of standing up to the Kremlin’s gas bullying.
In this sense, the use of east versus west rhetoric in Ukraine’s election campaign is a reflection of the country’s geopolitical reality.
Ukraine only stands to gain by integrating with Europe, and if the EU and Ukraine work together they might be able to break Moscow’s hydrocarbon headlock on its western neighbors.
But not everyone in Ukraine sees revived Russian imperialism as a problem.
The Kremlin was virtually the only country to recognize Yanukovych’s fraudulent 2004 election victory.
Equally important are the millions of eastern Ukrainians who make up Yanukovych’s electorate – many are not ethnic Ukrainians.
That’s why, despite his attempts over the last few years to present himself as a liberal economic pragmatist, Yanukovych is still very much bound to neo-Soviet issues such as not joining NATO, making Russian a second language and keeping the country under the control of eastern industrialists.
On September 11, three days before the summit hosted by his political nemesis, the prime minister revealed some of these leanings in an attack on EU policies toward Ukraine.
“In several areas of relations with the EU, a situation is forming which doesn’t please us at all,” he told a government meeting.
Yanukovych referred to the EU’s visa policy as “quite tough,” and accused the EU of protectionism against Ukrainian goods.
The Yanukovych team, financed by powerful eastern industrialists, can hardly be described as anti-Western. Pro-Yanukovych businessmen have led the drive toward greater corporate transparency in order to obtain Western loans to revamp their ageing Soviet-era assets.
And Yushchenko’s team also has its fair share of oligarchs.
But in terms of both rhetoric and policy, the President has been more consistently liberal, pro-European and reformist.
The question is whether this is enough to return him control over the government.
If it isn’t, the dissonance between the President’s unfulfilled policy goals and Europe’s unsatisified policy expectations will only grow.
John Marone, Kyiv Post Staff Journalist, Ukraine
September 17, 2007
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