ANALYSIS: Yushchenko election coalition divided over role for Lytvyn (07/17/05)

ANALYSIS

Yushchenko election coalition divided over role for Lytvyn

by Taras Kuzio
Eurasia Daily Monitor

As the Ukrainian Parliament adjourned on July 8 for its summer recess, Western observers were increasingly noting the divisions inside President Viktor Yushchenko's team. However, such commentaries typically focus on the wrong divisions.

In a report titled "Political Rivalries Threaten Ukraine's Reforms," the Financial Times (July 4) focused on divisions between Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and the free-market proponents grouped around Petro Poroshenko, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council. This split between left-right populists (Socialists, Tymoshenko) and free marketers (Yushchenko, Poroshenko, First Vice Prime Minister Anatolii Kinakh) has been noted before (see Eurasia Daily Monitor, May 11).

Although this division does exist, and personal relations between Ms. Tymoshenko and Mr. Poroshenko are poor, focusing on this schism misses two fundamental points.

First, although a populist, Prime Minister Tymoshenko is not ideologically determined, unlike left populists in the Socialist Party. This was clearly seen in parliamentary debates over legislation to join the World Trade Organization (WTO), which Ms. Tymoshenko and her faction supported but the Socialists (and Communists) opposed.

Ms. Tymoshenko's penchant for state capitalism also was short lived, from February to May, since she no longer supports price controls. The memorandum signed by the government, president and Parliament at the recent mini-Davos summit in Kyiv ended speculation about mass re-privatization (see EDM, June 29).

Second, Mr. Yushchenko must decide the expediency of forging an electoral alliance with Verkhovna Rada Chairman Volodymyr Lytvyn for the March 2006 parliamentary elections. Such an alliance would include Mr. Lytvyn's People's Party (the former Agrarians), Mr. Yushchenko's People's Union - Our Ukraine, and Ms. Tymoshenko's Fatherland party. Currently polling only 2-3 percent, Mr. Lytvyn's party might not cross the 3 percent threshold on its own.

According to Serhiy Skrypnyk, head of the Kyiv-based Evolution Media Research and Analysis Service, "Yushchenko needs Mr. Lytvyn because Ms. Tymoshenko is too radical for Mr. Yushchenko. She still relies on revolutionaries more than on the ruling elites. Mr. Lytvyn helps Mr. Yushchenko to incorporate the former, not-too-compromised elites in the new authorities while distancing them from the opposition."

Mr. Yushchenko's team needs to prevent Mr. Lytvyn from joining the ranks of the hard-line opposition parties (Regions of Ukraine and Social Democratic Party-United) or from becoming a third force positioned between the authorities and the hard-line opposition.

First Deputy Prime Minister Roman Besmertnyi, the main organizer behind Mr. Yushchenko's new People's Union - Our Ukraine Party, does not see Mr. Lytvyn bringing anything positive to an alliance, but his inclusion would ensure "that there will be no minuses" from him either (Ukrayinska Pravda, July 2).

Mr. Lytvyn sat on the fence throughout the 2004 presidential election, although his People's Party officially supported Prime Minster Viktor Yanukovych. Mr. Lytvyn, however, did keep Parliament open during the protests and when the legislature refused to accept the official results declaring Mr. Yanukovych the winner.

Mr. Lytvyn's parliamentary faction has tripled to 40 deputies since the Orange Revolution, as moderate defectors from former President Leonid Kuchma's camp have rallied under his umbrella. Mr. Lytvyn also has the loyal Democratic Ukraine satellite faction of 20 deputies, giving him a reliable bloc of at least 60 deputies.

Mr. Poroshenko remains Mr. Lytvyn's main lobbyist in the Yushchenko coalition. Speaking about Mr. Lytvyn during the 2004 election Mr. Poroshenko averred, "I am certain that this person undertook a major role in the revolution" (Ukrayinska Pravda, June 29). He and Mr. Lytvyn have similar backgrounds in the Kuchma camp. Until 1998-1999 he was aligned with the SDPU, but after leaving the SDPU Mr. Poroshenko created the Solidarity parliamentary faction with Mr. Lytvyn's assistance. In 2000-2001 Solidarity merged with the Party of the Regions.

Like Mr. Yushchenko, Mr. Poroshenko only went into the opposition against President Kuchma after the April 2001 parliamentary vote of no confidence in then-Prime Minister Yushchenko's government. New transcripts of conversations in Mr. Kuchma's office in June 2000, only 10 months earlier, quote Mr. Poroshenko describing his loyalty to the president. The transcripts also reveal the hostility Messrs. Poroshenko and Kuchma held toward then-First Vice Prime Minister Tymoshenko (Ukrayinska Pravda, July 6).

Messrs. Poroshenko and Lytvyn are also united by their reluctance to pursue the inquiry into the murder of opposition journalist Heorhii Gongadze. Although he headed the presidential administration when Mr. Gongadze was murdered in fall 2000, Mr. Lytvyn has not been called to give testimony to the Procurator General's Office. Rumors suggest that Mr. Lytvyn "earned" immunity thanks to his stance during the 2004 election.

Ukrainian commentators and Gongadze's widow, Myroslava, believe that it was Mr. Lytvyn who lobbied President Kuchma to order his Internal Affairs Minister to "deal" with Mr. Gongadze in September 2000. Mr. Lytvyn has blocked the parliamentary commission investigating the murder from presenting its findings, as the report accuses Mr. Lytvyn of involvement. Mr. Yushchenko and his Our Ukraine faction have also voted against hearing the report, which by law should have been heard in 2003 (rep.in.ua, June 15).

Local party members and key Yushchenko allies in Kyiv are resisting an alliance between the People's Union - Our Ukraine and Mr. Lytvyn, because they see former Kuchma officials taking political refuge in Mr. Lytvyn's party. The president of State Television Channel 1, Taras Stetskiv, complained that those who have joined Mr. Lytvyn's People's Party "are all from Mr. Kuchma's guard" (Ekspress, June 21). He expressed fears that an alliance with these former Kuchma supporters would harm the ratings of People's Union - Our Ukraine.

Mr. Besmertnyi admitted that local branches of the People's Union - Our Ukraine are pressuring him to not cooperate with Mr. Lytvyn. The head of the Kharkiv branch of the People's Union - Our Ukraine, for example, complained that former Kuchma supporters are joining Mr. Lytvyn's People's Party to ingratiate themselves with the new authorities (razom.org.ua, July 4).

Mr. Lytvyn has fiercely responded by accusing the People's Union - Our Ukraine and Ms. Tymoshenko's representatives of doing "everything in their power to discredit the idea [of an election alliance] at its birth" (Ukrayinska Pravda, July 7). He is now threatening to have his party independently contest the 2006 election.

Dr. Taras Kuzio is visiting professor at the Elliot School of International Affairs, George Washington University. The article above, which originally appeared in The Jamestown Foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor, is reprinted here with permission from the foundation (www.jamestown.org).

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