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JOHN  MARONE, KYIV
KILLING UKRAINE SOFTLY

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There is more than one way for a state leader to abuse his power, and Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko is practicing the 'softest' way of all. You can't call him a dictator who imposes his will on his people, as it's not clear what Mr. Yushchenko's will is - beyond the fact that he wants to stay in power, as do all state leaders. He also doesn't appear to be corrupt, although that's more than one can say about some of the people who surround him. Yet, the hero of Ukraine's Orange Revolution is nevertheless killing the infant democracy that he has spent much of his life serving.

The murder weapons of Mr. Yushchenko and his supporters are delay and distance. It's been two months since the country's early parliamentary elections, which Yushchenko called to prevent the government of Prime Minister Yanukovych from concentrating all state power in its hands. Yet, as we have seen before, no sooner is Ukraine's pro-Western president out of danger then he once again begins to flirt with the very forces that threatened him.

Rather than immediately pushing for a revived Orange coalition between the Our Ukraine-People Self Defense bloc (OUPSD), which he campaigned for during the last elections, and the bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko (BYuT), who helped him rise to the presidency in 2004, Yushchenko kept his distance from the horse trading, thereby delaying the formation of a new parliament, and all the while preaching the need to cooperate with rival factions.

These tactics won't return Yushchenko control over the parliament or government, and they may eventually cost him the presidency. But his primary concern seems to be to keep the populist Tymoshenko from stealing any more of his waning popularity.

Although Yanukovych's Regions party led the last government together with its leftist allies, it didn't get enough votes to form a majority this time. OUPSD and BYuT did have enough seats, a hair-thin two-seat majority. And although a few lawmakers from OUPSD tried every delay tactic they could come up with, a coalition was voted in on November 29.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that the dissenting lawmakers are close to Mr. Yushchenko.

One of the most vocal holdouts in the anti-BYuT camp of OUPSD was former Prime Minister Yury Yekhanurov. When Mr. Yekhanurov speaks, he does so with the president's tongue, especially with regard to relations with Yulia Tymoshenko.

Yekhanurov argued that although OUPSD, which he is a member of, had pledged to form a coalition with BYuT during the last election campaign, it didn't agree to just any coalition agreement. Mr. Yekhanurov's argument was the equivalent of a groom promising to marry his bride but refusing to sign the marriage certificate.

"Each side has the right to insist on its principles," he said on November 27.

That may be true, but the main brunt of OUPSD's election campaign was a revived Orange coalition, not the particular principles espoused by faceless bureaucrats such as Yekhanurov. In Ukrainian politics, anyone with enough money can get put on a party list, but the politicians trotted out to the public during OUPSD's campaigning were Yushchenko, two ministers, the leader of People's Self Defense Yury Lutsenko and Our Ukraine leader Vyacheslav Kyrylenko - not Yekhanurov.

Kyrylenko had been one of the most outspoken advocates of promptly signing a coalition agreement with BYuT.

However, when Kyrylenko tried to convene a session of OUPSD's political council to move the coalition talks along, his own Our Ukraine party members hampered him.

As it became clear on November 27 that the session wouldn't draw a quorum, Kyrylenko, a young, up-and-coming Ukrainian politician, lashed out at the half dozen or so party holdouts.

He said that if the Orange blocs don't unite, Ukrainian voters would lose faith in OUPSD and its honorary leader, President Yushchenko.

"But the main thing is that this disappointment of our voters will lead to the formation in Ukraine of a de-facto two-party political system consisting of BYuT and the Regions," Kyrylenko said.

Indeed, during the September 30 snap elections, Ukrainians punished the president's party. Even after Yushchenko's traditional Our Ukraine party teamed up with Lutsenko's newly formed People's Self Defense, it still lost votes from the 2006 parliamentary elections. Regions has maintained steady support in the country's Russian-speaking south and east, coming in first again this year with 175 seats in the 450-seat Rada. But the real rising star in Ukraine is populist femme fatale Yulia Tymoshenko, whose voter support jumped from 22 percent to 30 percent between 2006 and 2007, coming in a close second to Regions.

Ms. Tymoshenko, who was fired as Yushchenko's first premier in 2005, has come back to claim the legacy of Ukraine's Orange Revolution. While Yushchenko let their common enemy, Yanukovych, return to power as premier in 2006, Tymoshenko has consistently refused to compromise with Region's so-called Donetsk clan. Yushchenko, on the other hand, has appeared weak for 1) agreeing to last-minute and controversial constitutional reforms during his rise to power in 2004; 2) delaying the formation of an Orange coalition following the 2006 and 2007 parliamentary elections; and 3) allowing Yanukovych and company to muscle away most of his executive power between the last two parliamentary elections, when Yanukovych returned as premier.

Now Tymoshenko is set to return as premier. But right up to Thursday's coalition vote, Yushchenko let his subordinates undermine the prospects of a revived Orange coalition.

As Kyrylenko was trying to pull together a quorum on Tuesday, Yushchenko's chief of staff was thinking up excuses for his boss's conspicuous absence from events.

"If party leaders really wanted to see their honorary chairman at their meeting, they should have agreed their plans with him," Viktor Baloga, the head of Yushchenko's Presidential Secretariat, said.

The country's parliament has not functioned since last summer, and, before that, Regions and its leftist allies used the legislature as a platform to attack Yushchenko; yet, the president was too busy to get involved with creating a new Rada.

This week, Mr. Yushchenko was on a trip to Luhansk Region to discuss energy saving. For most of the last couple of months, he has been devoting his time to even more foreign trips to get support for recognition of Ukraine's famine as an act of genocide.

On Wednesday, Mr. Yanukovych said his government would stay in power until a new coalition is chosen.

"How long coalition talks will continue, we don't know. For us, the important thing is to keep the situation under control and get things done," he said.

Although a new Orange coalition has now been formed, Regions may still remain in control, as Tymoshenko still has to be confirmed as premier. Even if pro-presidential deputies do approve Tymoshenko's candidacy, they can harass her policy by voting with the opposition.

As for Mr. Yushchenko, the tactics of delay and distance will not help him any more now than they have in the past. By sabotaging the Orange revival he has undermined his own diminishing chances of a second term.

As the spiritual leader behind the Orange Revolution, Yushchenko brought his country freedom of speech, fair elections and other democratic gifts hitherto unknown in the post-Soviet republic, but his inability to lead and reluctance to let others do it for him is killing the new country he created, killing it softly, but killing it nevertheless.

John Marone, Kyiv Post Staff Journalist, Ukraine

November 29, 2007



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