Yushchenko aide visiting Washington was optimistic about Orange coalition (06/18/06)

Yushchenko aide visiting Washington was optimistic about Orange coalition

by Yaro Bihun
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

WASHINGTON - Less than a week before the Orange Revolution coalition talks were apparently falling apart in Kyiv, one of President Viktor Yushchenko's top aides visiting Washington was expressing optimism about the prospect of the president's Our Ukraine party, the Yulia Tymoshenko bloc and the Socialist Party forming Ukraine's next government.

Briefing representatives of the Ukrainian American community at the Ukrainian Embassy here on June 7, First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Secretariat Ivan Vasiunyk said an announcement to that effect could be expected within a week or two.

He left himself some verbal wiggle room, however.

"As of now, almost all - almost all - participants of the coalition are convinced that the new prime minister should be Yulia Tymoshenko," he said, noting that negotiations aimed at getting a compromise candidate for the chairmanship of the Verkhovna Rada - a position openly sought by Socialist Party leader Oleksander Moroz - were continuing.

As it turned out, the impasse over the Rada chairmanship derailed the negotiations on June 12.

Mr. Vasiunyk was visiting Washington for talks with U.S. officials, members of Congress and the International Republican Institute about implementing a U.S.-funded reorganization and management reform program for the Ukrainian government.

He said that President Yushchenko was taking an active part in the negotiating process and that he has stressed that building a workable coalition did not depend solely on getting agreement on who would occupy which government position. The president insisted that achieving a unified political platform was paramount in the talks, he said.

These policy talks, which Mr. Vasiunyk described as being very intense but positive, were in the final stage, but with some issues still outstanding, among them, land ownership reform - a primary concern of the Socialists - and the "pace and scope" of Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic integration process.

He said the president had also underscored the need to bring some order to a dysfunctional Constitutional Court, and radical reform of the judiciary, which, he said, has shown evidence of subjectivity and corruption, as well as what he called "judicial bacchanalia" in many jurisdictions - a total lack of judicial responsibility. Other areas in need of reform include the police and procuracies, he added.

These governmental decisions, Mr. Vasiunyk said, are being made transparently and without, as under previous administrations, influence from oligarchs or "our northern neighbor."

"Until now those in the Kremlin have not been able to accept the fact that the prime ministership of Ukraine is decided at a negotiating table and not in the Kremlin," he said.

As President Yushchenko has noted, the road to democracy in Ukraine, as in all countries, has not been an easy one, he said.

"On this road we have had accomplishments and encountered problems after the Orange Revolution." He added, however: "We prefer to say that, as of now, we are unsatisfied rather than disillusioned," and Ukraine being a democratic state is no longer in question.

Mr. Vasiunyk singled out some notable economic and social improvements since the Orange Revolution - a fourfold increase in foreign investments in the first quarter of this year as compared to the same period last year, and a 6 percent increase in the birth rate nine months after the government's announced its family assistance program.

But he also noted that reform is still lacking in other sectors, such as housing, energy, health and education.

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