As the 14th anniversary of Ukraine's independence approaches,
promises of the 'maidan' are recalled

by Zenon Zawada
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - To deliver on all the promises and ideals declared on the "maidan" (Independence Square) stage during the Orange Revolution would have been impossible for President Viktor Yushchenko.

It's not exceedingly high expectations of Mr. Yushchenko, however, that have fomented widespread disappointment in his presidency among intellectuals and common Ukrainians alike.

Their concern is that Mr. Yushchenko is not particularly interested in reforming Ukrainian government and the political culture - especially considering he had the momentum from the Orange Revolution to shake things up.

"The system that existed under (former President Leonid) Kuchma's time has remained, although vacancies have been filled by other people," said Kost Bondarenko, a political scientist with the Institute of National Strategy in Kyiv, an organization with a Moscow affiliate that is funded by Russian and Ukrainian citizens.

Even if he tried to implement major reforms, it is also apparent that Mr. Yushchenko has lacked the leadership ability to implement them, experts told The Weekly.

"If anyone knows anything about Yushchenko's approach, he's an anti-manager," said Ivan Lozowy, president of the Kyiv-based Institute for Statehood and Democracy, which is exclusively financed by Ukrainian business donations.

"He has a distaste and aversion for details or specifics. He's a person who operates in the realm of generalities. That has spilled over into what we've seen."

Rather than grappling with critical domestic issues, Mr. Yushchenko spent much of his first several months abroad, meeting with foreign leaders and delivering speeches before the Western governments that supported him throughout the Orange Revolution.

As a result of the neglect, experts said, the Ukrainian economy is struggling, his Cabinet of Ministers is a den of squabbling special interests and the president has been embarrassed by ethical scandals that seem to crop up every month.

"He and [Prime Minister Yulia] Tymoshenko have overall done poorly," Mr. Lozowy said. "But it was to be expected and hasn't come as a surprise to most people because the opposition was geared exclusively toward coming to power, and no preparations were made for the day after."

Among the dozens of promises delivered during the Orange Revolution, perhaps none resonated so much as Mr. Yushchenko's stated goal of untangling the corrupt web of business and politics that dominated Ukrainian government.

In the six and a half months of the Yushchenko administration, it has become obvious to Ukrainians that nothing has been done to address this issue.

"The question is, did he really want this separation of business and power or rather did he want to continue the prior regime's policy," said Volodymyr Pokhovalo, the project leader of Political Thought, a Kyiv-based think-tank.

The new government has its fair share of businessmen who actively seek to promote their own business interests, experts said, the most visible of which is Petro Poroshenko, the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council.

Although not a Cabinet Minister, Mr. Yushchenko has allowed Mr. Poroshenko to take a leading role in government, particularly Ukrainian foreign policy. He has traveled to Russia in lieu of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko when she has canceled visits.

"Poroshenko has conflicted with Tymoshenko, and he's essentially a nobody," Mr. Lozowy said. "He's a secretary who is supposed to make decisions by collegial voting. Instead, he's close to the (presidential) body, and he's able to push his personal policies, put people in positions that he knows and likes, and create a network through Yushchenko."

Business interests seen

In addition to owning Channel 5, Ukraine's 24-hour station, Mr. Poroshenko runs the Ukrprominvest conglomerate, which includes five confectionery factories, a business that sells foreign-made cars and motorcycles, and another business that produces motor vehicles and ships.

Business interests are even more fiercely represented within the Cabinet.

Just a few weeks after starting his job, Justice Minister Roman Zvarych threatened to resign his post after Mr. Yushchenko signed a decree banning oil re-exportation, a move supported by all Cabinet ministers with the exception of Mr. Zvarych.

The Cabinet wanted to cease oil re-exportation because Ukraine had an oil and petroleum deficit for agricultural use.

However, Mr. Zvarych and his wife, Svitlana, would have suffered from the ban because she is assistant manager of Oil Transit, an oil re-exporting firm that buys oil from Russia and resells it to other countries.

Soon after Mr. Zvarych's threat, Mr. Yushchenko had the Cabinet lift the ban, which some interpreted as him siding with Cabinet Ministers' business interests.

However, Mr. Yushchenko offered another explanation.

"If we say that a government decision can shut down a whole business activity, it is not a market approach," he said. "We have agreed that the Cabinet will review its decision."

The Cabinet minister with the most obvious conflict of interest is Yevhen Chervonenko, Ukraine's Transport and Communications Minister, who happens to own Orlan Trans, Ukraine's biggest truck hauling company.

Emergency Situations Minister David Zhvania repeated absurd claims last year that he owned no businesses, despite being among the Orange Revolution's main financiers. He is a leading Ukrainian oligarch, having involvement with about 20 businesses or factories, according to Biznes, a weekly Ukrainian business magazine.

Ukrainians have started labeling the Cabinet the "Orange Oligarchs," Mr. Bondarenko said.

The consensus among many Ukrainian political experts is that the Cabinet either needs an overhaul, or Mr. Yushchenko has to assert firmer control over the competing, clashing interests.

"He's appointed these relatively diverse groups of people that have little in common," Mr. Lozowy said. "These are not professionals, other than lining their own pockets. That's all they've ever known. I don't think they know what reform means."

Lost opportunity

Mr. Yushchenko's weak political resolve domestically was a lost opportunity considering that previously approved legislation will strip the Ukrainian presidency of much of its powers next year, experts said.

In particular, Mr. Yushchenko won't be able to hire and fire Cabinet ministers, oblast state administration chairmen (which some sources refer to as "governors") and local officials.

It's as though Mr. Yushchenko has already assumed the figurehead role of the presidency before it was even imposed on him, said Taras Kuzio, a visiting professor at George Washington University. Ukrainian experts hold similar opinions.

"He had carte blanche - more than just constitutional powers, but also the enormous support of citizens," Mr. Pokhovalo said.

"And of course it was a political investment in Yushchenko which hasn't brought to citizens any apparent returns or profit."

Though Mr. Yushchenko impressed foreign leaders with his extensive travels abroad and stirring speeches before Western parliamentary bodies, these trips have produced minimal tangible results, experts said.

Foreign investment has plummeted, largely because businessmen fear the government's current campaign of reprivatizing industries and factories that were sold for unrealistic prices during the Kuchma years to his circle of businessmen.

Ukraine has not secured any status or membership in any international organization that would bring it any closer to Europe as of yet.

Beyond the lack of tangible results, Mr. Yushchenko's government has faced repeated embarrassments, beginning with Mr. Zvarych's admission in April that he does not have a master's degree from Columbia University, as he had claimed for at least eight years. Mr. Zvarych also admitted he was not a professor at New York University, as he had been claiming in his official biographies.

Despite the deceit, Mr. Yushchenko wholeheartedly defended Mr. Zvarych and urged reporters to leave him alone.

Many Cabinet Ministers received their posts because of their stalwart support for Mr. Yushchenko during the Orange Revolution as a form of political patronage, Mr. Pokhovalo said.

The WTO battles

More embarrassing domestically came the revelation during the Verkhovna Rada's World Trade Organization (WTO) battles that there were about 20 moonlighters, or "sumisnyky," in Mr. Yushchenko's government.

It is illegal for newly appointed government officials to hold onto their national deputy seats in the Verkhovna Rada.

Among the most visible violators of this law were Finance Minister Viktor Pynzenyk, State Property Fund Chair Valentyna Semeniuk and Mr. Poroshenko.

During the WTO debates, Mr. Yushchenko's pro-Russian opponents capitalized on their violations and hung a wide banner in the Verkhovna Rada that listed the names and photos of the moonlighters, shouting "Sumisnyky Het" (Moonlighters Out) and "Hanba" (Shame).

The debates derailed even further when supposed allies in the Our Ukraine coalition, members of the Socialist Party and the People's Party of Ukraine, failed to back WTO initiatives, either abstaining or not registering any vote at all.

Their lack of support at the last minute stunned and disappointed the Yushchenko government. Economics Minister Serhii Teriokhin said Agriculture Minister Oleksander Baranivskyi, a Socialist Party member, assured him of his support.

Mr. Teriokhin called for Mr. Baranivskyi's resignation after he and the Socialists abandoned support for the government's WTO campaign. Ms. Tymoshenko accused People's Party of Ukraine leader and Verkhovna Rada Chairman Volodymyr Lytvyn of sabotage.

Western political experts accused the Yushchenko government of failing to adequately prepare political allies for the WTO battle in the Rada, a charge Ms. Tymoshenko vehemently denied.

"Obviously, something as sensitive as WTO, if they worked hard at it, they could have pushed the vote through," Mr. Lozowy said. "But unfortunately working hard on specifics is Mr. Yushchenko's weakness."

Throughout his tenure, Mr. Yushchenko has demonstrated irritation, and at some points exasperation, with his government and its inability to affect change, Mr. Lozowy said.

During May negotiations with Russian oil executives to resolve a fuel crisis, Mr. Yushchenko had an emotional outburst and suggested that Ms. Tymoshenko resign, according to Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, a respected Weekly newspaper in Ukraine.

He also allegedly said that "Ukraine's government is the worst in Europe and he regrets selecting Ms. Tymoshenko to her position."

In a sudden move that appeared somewhat rash, Mr. Yushchenko signed a July 19 decree eliminating the State Traffic Inspection, known by its Ukrainian acronym as DAI.

"Yushchenko feels frustration that he's not been able to get things done," Mr. Lozowy said. "His failure to move things is creating a boomerang effect whereby his future ability to change things is decreased because people are noticing he can't get anything done."

Experts suspected he was trying to imitate Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili when he eliminated that nation's corrupt highway patrol.

However, Mr. Saakashvili was much more strategic about changing his nation's highway patrol, deciding not to rehire the fired officers and significantly boosting salaries, experts said.

Mr. Yushchenko's new highway patrol will rehire many of the same corrupt officers and offer them no pay hikes, instead instituting a system of bonuses, DAI officials said.

Son's lifestyle an issue

Perhaps the most apparent demonstration of Mr. Yushchenko's mounting irritation was his angry response to questions posed by Ukrayinska Pravda reporter Serhii Leschenko about his 19-year-old son's luxurious lifestyle, Mr. Yushchenko's latest ethical scandal.

"Conduct yourself as a polite journalist, not like a hired killer," Mr. Yushchenko snapped at Mr. Leschenko.

In describing how he advised his 19-year-old son to deal with journalists probing his spending at restaurants, Mr. Yushchenko said, "Pay the check in front of the journalist's mug (morda), and then go to court."

Mr. Yushchenko also described the author of an exposé, journalist Leonid Amchuk, as "an assassin, who had never worked a day of his life for freedom of the press."

For Westerners, the thought of Andrii Yushchenko cruising the streets of Kyiv in a $160,000 BMW M6 was not particularly scandalous. Nor was it offensive that he lives in a 200-square meter penthouse in Kyiv's posh Lypky district, where rents for an apartment half that size range about $2,000 a month.

For Ukrainians, however, Andrii Yushchenko's lifestyle was scandalous, considering that Mr. Yushchenko had portrayed himself as an honest politician who had not engaged in any corrupt business affairs.

During the Orange Revolution, Mr. Yushchenko himself declared that it was immoral for government officials to bask in wealth while the Ukrainian people struggled in poverty.

Mr. Yushchenko could not have possibly afforded his son's luxuries based on his lifetime of government salaries. The Ukrainian president's current salary is $56,160 a year.

In early August, State Tax Administration Deputy Chief Mykola Katerynchuk said Andrii Yushchenko owns the rights to Orange Revolution trademarks, including the "Tak!" and horseshoe logos.

Presidential spokeswoman Iryna Heraschenko has denied Andrii Yushchenko is profiting off the Orange Revolution logos.

Mr. Yushchenko has yet to fully explain his son's luxuries and source of income. He had claimed his 19-year-old son's work for a consulting firm enabled him to afford his luxuries.

Yet Ms. Heraschenko offered a conflicting explanation - that Mr. Yushchenko's son is working for an insurance and construction company.

Is criticism too harsh?

When asked what successes Mr. Yushchenko has had so far, most political experts said there were few. However, there are those who believe critics have been too harsh on Mr. Yushchenko, including Michael McFaul, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"The expectations the world had for Yushchenko after the Orange Revolution were over-inflated, and even if he performed vibrantly, he would not have met the expectations," Dr. McFaul said.

Freedom of speech has improved, experts said, and so have relations with the United States and European Union.

The U.S. announced in mid-July that it will grant Ukraine market economy status by the year's end.

Despite the WTO fiasco, Mr. Yushchenko did manage to muster enough political support to get eight out of the 14 necessary bills passed, including the critical intellectual property bill that established criminal liability for illegal circulation of compact discs, equipment and raw materials for their production, as well as molds.

WTO entry is still a possibility for Ukraine by the year's end, but opposition from pro-Russian forces will once again be fierce.

Among the political stars to emerge in the Yushchenko government has been Yurii Lutsenko, the internal affairs minister who has been one of the few ministers producing positive results.

Under his leadership officials of the Interior Ministry and the Procurator General's Office (PGO) have strategically pursued investigations and arrests of oligarchs, politicians and businessmen with suspected criminal dealings.

The PGO's biggest arrests were of former Donetsk Oblast Council Chairman Boris Kolesnykov, accused of extortion among other offenses, and former Zakarpattia State Oblast Administration Chairman Ivan Rizak, accused of corruption and electoral fraud, among other offenses.

On August 17, officials detained Yevhen Kushnariov, the former chairman of the Kharkiv Oblast State Administration, for economic-related offenses. Mr. Kushnariov was among those who most vocally advocated separatism for Ukraine's eastern oblasts during the Orange Revolution.

Officials are currently pursuing an investigation into the business affairs of Ukraine's biggest businessman, Rynat Akhmetov.

This week, investigators were looking for documents in Mr. Akhmetov's offices "in connection with prosecutors' investigations of tax evasion and abuse of power," said Irina Ankudimova of the Donetsk prosecutor's office.

The Orange Revolution wasn't necessarily about enthusiastic support for Mr. Yushchenko, but a strong desire to rid Ukraine of the Kuchma regime and replace Ukraine's dysfunctional government with a political system that works more effectively, experts said.

"I didn't meet any unconditional fans of Yushchenko on the maidan," Mr. Lozowy said. "At that time, during the Revolution, they said, 'No problem - we'll throw him out if things don't work out.' "

Therefore, the Orange Revolution was not about one person, nor was it about any particular political ideology or economic policy, experts said.

"I categorically reject that the dreams of Orange Revolution have failed," Dr. McFaul said. "It was a seminal event in the history of Ukraine that will be remembered as one of the great events to help make the nation and state of Ukraine."

And what do average Ukrainians think?

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, August 21, 2005, No. 34, Vol. LXXIII

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