ANALYSIS: Ukrainian president sacks government, offering more questions than answers (09/18/05)

ANALYSIS

Ukrainian president sacks government, offering more questions than answers

by Jan Maksymiuk
RFE/RL Newsline

President Viktor Yushchenko on September 9 dismissed the Cabinet of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and accepted the previous day's resignation of National Security and Defense Council Secretary Petro Poroshenko. A few days earlier, Mr. Yushchenko accepted the resignation of his chief of staff, or head of the Presidential Secretariat, Oleksander Zinchenko.

Thus, three of Mr. Yushchenko's closest allies and brothers-in-arms from the November-December 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine have found themselves outside the government and are not likely to return to it before the March 2006 parliamentary elections. The Orange Revolution, in accordance with a well-known saying, has started to devour its children.

The dismissal of the Ukrainian government took place amid allegations of corruption in the president's inner circle, which were publicly voiced by Mr. Zinchenko and Ms. Tymoshenko's closest aide, Mykhailo Brodskyi. Both men pointed to Mr. Poroshenko as the main backstage operator in Ukrainian politics, who allegedly obstructed the government's activities and pursued private interests in his official position.

President Yushchenko, in explaining his decision to sack Ms. Tymoshenko's Cabinet and Mr. Poroshenko, said his colleagues in the government have "lost the team spirit" and "concentrated on PR activities" instead of working toward implementing Orange Revolution ideals.

According to most Ukrainian commentators, Mr. Yushchenko's radical move on September 8 has temporarily strengthened his position as the top arbiter in the Ukrainian political arena and the guarantor of the country's stability. Both the government and the president have been steadily losing popularity in recent months among the public, while the Orange Revolution pledge to return dishonestly privatized properties to the people has been perceived by an increasing number of people in Ukraine as just a slogan covering the redistribution of those properties among oligarchic clans.

In the short run, President Yushchenko appears to have gained a lot in the eyes of those Ukrainians who still believe that the Orange Revolution was about more democracy and less corruption in their country than about bestowing government posts and benefits upon revolution heroes.

However, Mr. Yushchenko may well find it problematic to achieve any further progress in pushing the Orange Revolution program. Without doubt, Mr. Yushchenko has made a very prudent move by appointing Yurii Yekhanurov as caretaker prime minister. Mr. Yekhanurov, who has extensive experience in many government posts, is widely seen as a technocrat and is expected to form a government of experts and economists rather than revolutionary combatants. And Mr. Yekhanurov stands a very good chance of being approved by the Verkhovna Rada.

But it is very unlikely that he will be allowed by Parliament to pursue any radical reforms prior to the March 2006 parliamentary elections.

As manifested by a number of abortive votes in the Verkhovna Rada in July on government-proposed bills to facilitate Ukraine's membership in the World Trade Organization, Mr. Yushchenko cannot count on a reliable parliamentary majority to support his reformist agenda. Now, after Prime Minister Tymoshenko's dismissal, the chances of forging a lasting parliamentary alliance for the government are even slimmer. The best that can be expected from the new Cabinet is to maintain macroeconomic stability in the country in the run-up to and during the 2006 parliamentary election campaign, and to secure supplies of Russian gas for 2006 at a tolerable price.

While Ms. Tymoshenko was prime minister, it was understood that Mr. Yushchenko's Our Ukraine People's Union and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc would form a parliamentary election coalition, preferably together with the People's Party headed by Verkhovna Rada Chairman Volodymyr Lytvyn, to counter the forces that in the Orange Revolution supported Mr. Yushchenko's presidential rival, former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. Now the probability of such a coalition seems to be virtually nil.

On the contrary, many expect a bitter election confrontation between pro-Yushchenko and pro-Tymoshenko forces. Such a development might lead to a serious political disorientation among adherents of the former Yushchenko-Tymoshenko revolutionary duet and add to their further disillusionment.

Mr. Yushchenko's political position may also be considerably undermined by the political reform that is going to take effect on January 1. The reform, which was adopted as a compromise to overcome the presidential-election standoff in 2004, will shift the center of political power in Ukraine from the president to the Cabinet and Parliament. Some in Ukraine speculated that Mr. Yushchenko might somehow cancel this reform to prevent a curtailment of his prerogatives. Now that Ms. Tymoshenko has become Mr. Yushchenko's political rival and will almost certainly fight for the post of prime minister against the pro-Yushchenko forces in the upcoming parliamentary elections, she will have little incentive to cancel the political reform to preserve President Yushchenko's political clout.

In any event, the stakes in the 2006 parliamentary elections in Ukraine will be very high and the elections themselves will be a political fight with no rules.

Jan Maksymiuk is the Belarus and Ukraine specialist on the staff of RFE/RL Newsline.

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