REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK: How could this have happened? (05/07/06)

REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK

by Zenon Zawada
Kyiv Press Bureau

How could this have happened?

Just 17 months after Ukrainians launched a revolution in which they were willing to lay down their lives for Viktor Yushchenko, he is now the target of disgust and derision for many of those very same people.

Out of 25 million Ukrainians who voted in the 2006 parliamentary elections, only 14 percent, or 3.5 million of them, supported Mr. Yushchenko's Our Ukraine bloc.

Typically, finishing in third place isn't bad.

But considering that the Our Ukraine bloc won the most votes in the 2002 elections, and considering that Mr. Yushchenko was the most admired man in Ukraine one year ago, his result can be described as disastrous.

Incredibly enough, Mr. Yushchenko has become a virtual lame-duck president one and a half years after a the revolution that swept him into power.

With every day that passes in the elections' aftermath, it becomes ever more apparent that Mr. Yushchenko's political career has peaked with the Orange Revolution. His future is dim, at best.

Eastern Ukrainians have demonstrated that they will never support Mr. Yushchenko, while central and western Ukrainians have made clear that it's Yulia Tymoshenko whom they trust.

The Tymoshenko Bloc received 60 percent more votes than Our Ukraine, or 5.7 million.

The result made it loud and clear to Mr. Yushchenko that the Orange electorate wants Ms. Tymoshenko to return to government as prime minister.

For one reason or another, that, to him, is anathema.

Several theories are circulating throughout Kyiv: he fears her challenge for the presidency in 2009, he doesn't agree with her governing style, he doesn't agree with her policies, she is corrupt, his circle of corrupt cronies loathes her or perhaps fears her.

Ms. Tymoshenko has repeatedly alleged that it's Mr. Yushchenko's notorious entourage that manipulates his antipathy for her because she stands in the way of their corrupt activities.

Mr. Yushchenko's aversion to Ms. Tymoshenko returning to the prime ministership became apparent three weeks ago when he rejected the point in a coalition-forming protocol agreement that allows for the bloc winning the most votes to select the prime minister.

By requiring a detailed program of activities among coalition participants, which Mr. Yushchenko indicated could be at least 100 pages long, the president is clearly revealing his distrust of Ms. Tymoshenko.

By requiring the program, Mr. Yushchenko wants to hold Ms. Tymoshenko accountable.

That way, should another major conflict arise, Mr. Yushchenko could specifically point out to the public how Ms. Tymoshenko is pursuing her own agenda instead of the one set by the coalition forces.

Our Ukraine's leadership remains arrogant.

Roman Zvarych figuratively wagged his finger at Tymoshenko ally Mykola Tomenko during a political talk show several weeks ago, telling him, "We have the votes that you need." So let's sit down and negotiate, he said.

But why should Ms. Tymoshenko be the one bending over backwards when she has the power to make or break Mr. Yushchenko's political future?

Our Ukraine may well have the votes the Tymoshenko Bloc needs. But with every day that Our Ukraine drags out the coalition-forming process, votes from its share of the electorate will slowly trickle over to the Tymoshenko Bloc.

Through some wonder or divine intervention, Our Ukraine might be able to convince Ms. Tymoshenko to take the Parliament's chairmanship instead.

Other than that political outcome, Mr. Yushchenko's only hope for survival is to allow Ms. Tymoshenko to become prime minister.

The fact that Mr. Yushchenko and Ms. Tymoshenko are already fighting and wrangling portends little chance of a renewed Orange union surviving beyond the three and a half years the president wants for a coalition.

What's the other option?

Political suicide is the undoubted consensus in the event of an Our Ukraine-Party of the Regions coalition.

The Our Ukraine bloc won three oblasts in the elections, all in Ukraine's most pro-European, nationally conscious regions: Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Zakarpattia.

An Our Ukraine-Party of the Regions coalition would seal those votes forever beyond the reach of Our Ukraine.

In the event of such a coalition, the Our Ukraine bloc will inevitably splinter, and Mr. Yushchenko will become a bona fide one-term president, if that isn't the case already.

It's even doubtful that Mr. Yushchenko's political party, the Our Ukraine People's Union, would survive.

Mr. Yushchenko is the only slightly appealing personality on an Our Ukraine People's Union roster that features the likes of Roman Bezsmertnyi, Petro Poroshenko and David Zhvania, who are essentially self-interested businessmen or career politicians incapable of offering any vision for Ukraine.

Dismissing the Parliament is Mr. Yushchenko's third option, another path to sure disaster since few Ukrainian voters want a repeat of the elections.

If an Our Ukraine-Party of the Regions coalition would put Mr. Yushchenko in the doghouse with his electoral base, dismissing the Parliament would send him straight to the gutter.

The current no-win situation in which Mr. Yushchenko finds himself is a rare display of political self-destruction - a textbook example of how to sabotage one's own career that will likely be studied by political scientists for decades to come.

And now we confront the possibility that Our Ukraine, the political movement that brought about the Orange Revolution, will not even exist as a political entity by the time the next major elections roll around.

| Home Page |