REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK

by Zenon Zawada
Kyiv Press Bureau

A humiliating presidential position

KYIV - Finding himself in the most humiliating position of his political life, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko needed some spin to redeem his disaster of a presidency.

First came his August 4 Verkhovna Rada speech, in which he cast himself as a unifier of Ukraine.

"Calls to consolidate the nation are before us," Mr. Yushchenko said. "This is a task for every National Deputy. We're not only supposed to discuss our daily bread. We're supposed to have a unified nation."

Two days later, Presidential Secretariat Assistant Chair Ivan Vasiunyk appeared on the 1+1 television network with the task of portraying Mr. Yushchenko as Ukraine's Abraham Lincoln.

He read a quote someone had written about the legendary American president.

"The president is a marvelous person and quite wise, but he lacks will and yearning, and I'm afraid he doesn't have the strength to run the nation," the quote stated.

"At that time, nobody understood him," Mr. Vasiunyk said of Mr. Lincoln. "But Lincoln is now the most eminent American president."

Nice try Ivas, except the situation's a bit different.

Mr. Lincoln didn't make Confederate leader Jefferson Davis his vice president. Nor did he compromise with the Confederacy in allowing slavery to persist.

And while Mr. Lincoln wanted to free the slaves (whatever his motive might have been), the Party of the Regions will draw Ukraine closer to a Moscow government seeking to expand its cultural and economic dominance.

Let's face it - we were smitten, awestruck and mesmerized by a tall, handsome Ukrainian-speaking banker with a Ukrainian American wife from Chicago.

For the Ukrainian diaspora in the United States, Viktor Yushchenko appeared to be Ukraine's messiah - the long-awaited leader who would guide his people out of captivity.

We were desperate, and so were the Western-oriented patriots of Ukraine.

In times of desperation, many will overlook annoying facts, opting for myths instead.

But the fact is Mr. Yushchenko had spent many years in the Kuchma government: as prime minister for a year-and-a-half and National Bank chair for nearly three.

In building his banking career, Mr. Yushchenko was, in fact, an active Communist Party leader.

Mr. Yushchenko willingly signed a letter that smeared the valiant anti-Kuchma protesters of March 2001 as "fascists," and his Our Ukraine political bloc mostly refrained from supporting anti-Kuchma actions.

These aspects of Mr. Yushchenko's life reveal that he's a pragmatist more than anything else.

When Mr. Yushchenko sacked Yulia Tymoshenko in September, I asked him whether he planned on bringing former Kuchma officials back into government.

He had just appointed Yurii Yekhanurov as prime minister, a fellow who chose, as one of his first acts, to engage in a public embrace of Mr. Kuchma in front of cameramen and photographers.

As often, Mr. Yushchenko was long-winded in his revealing response. He must have thought my question was a bit naive:

"I think that there were times when you ran into Kuchma, were in the same room with him, looked into his eyes and asked him something. But your position and principles can remain unchanged ...," Mr. Yushchenko said.

"Excuse me, I was prime minister under Kuchma," Mr. Yushchenko said. "That's an even greater sin! By the way, you are breathing the same air that Kuchma may have breathed. It's gotten to the point where I've had enough. Kuchma is a fact. Kuchma is a Ukrainian fact!"

Not only was Kuchma a Ukrainian fact, but thanks to Mr. Yushchenko, he remains a Ukrainian fact.

All of his top cronies, Yanukovych, Azarov, Andrii Kliuyev, Dmytro Tabachnyk, are back in Ukraine's top leadership positions.

Kuchma's politics also linger.

At his August 8 installation, Foreign Minister Borys Tarasyuk repeated the same foreign policy stance that he had repeated dozens of times while serving under Mr. Kuchma. (Rukh's current leader was a top Communist official too, you know.)

"Ukraine's foreign policy won't be pro-Western, won't be pro-Eastern, but pro-Ukrainian."

Confronted with the choice of having either Ms. Tymoshenko or Mr. Yanukovych as his prime minister, Mr. Yushchenko viewed the latter as the lesser of two evils.

He views Ms. Tymoshenko as a threat to Ukraine's stability, and ever since firing her, Mr. Yushchenko has referred to the need for stability more than anything else.

What the oblivious president doesn't seem to realize is that the Orange Revolution was a rejection of stability, and a demand for reform.

If Ukrainians wanted stability, they wouldn't have camped out on the streets of Kyiv when it was twenty below zero and snowing.

The Carpathian Mountains would have been more interesting.

And despite Mr. Yushchenko's attempt to paint this nightmare scenario as an attempt at national unity, Ukrainians didn't elect him to unite them with a bunch of criminals.

It is stunning that this question even has to be posed, but did Viktor Yushchenko ever even believe in the Orange Revolution?

It now appears that in his quest for the Ukrainian presidency, Mr. Yushchenko took advantage of the Orange Revolution's momentum, sluggishly attending the meetings but never becoming a card-carrying member.

One veteran Kyiv photographer observed how Ms. Tymoshenko was encouraging a rather reluctant Mr. Yushchenko throughout the revolution, pushing him to this march and prodding him to that protest.

Either Mr. Yushchenko just doesn't get it, or he doesn't care. And the first six months of his presidency serve as ample evidence of that.

The whole world was anxiously watching and waiting for Mr. Yushchenko to take full advantage of the immense political power and trust he had acquired and use it to clean up a government mired in corruption.

Month after month passed with no arrests, no prosecutions and few progressive reforms.

(Sorry Viktor, but eliminating the national traffic police isn't what Ukrainians stood on the maidan for.)

Mr. Yushchenko's rise to power is a historical accident, in the view of Ivan Lozowy, a Ukrainian political expert and New York University Law School graduate.

Mr. Kuchma plucked him out of the National Bank and installed him as prime minister because he was largely a weak, disassociated and detached politician, he said.

That hasn't changed a bit.

When she saw Mr. Yushchenko recently, Orange Revolution hero Praskovya Koroliuk told me Mr. Yushchenko appeared a changed man.

But perhaps it's not Mr. Yushchenko who has changed, but instead our perceptions have deepened regarding a man who hasn't changed much at all.

A tall, handsome, devout Orthodox Christian makes for good television footage, but there's got to be some substance there.

Mr. Yushchenko was at the right place, at the right time, but the wrong man.

And while he blew it (and boy did he blow it), the Party of the Regions have shown they are the sharpest, most effective political force in Ukraine.

Hiring the top K Street U.S. public relations firm Davis Manafort was among the smartest things they did.

Politicians synonymous with crime, deceit and violence were given a makeover.

Baby-faced Akhmetov got up in front of a Donetsk audience to share his tear-jerking experience of poverty, describing how he slept on folding beds as a boy in a home without plumbing.

In his own image makeover, Mr. Yanukovych began to speak of the Orange Revolution as if he supported it!

"It's very important that in 2004, people came out on squares, and we, with you all, weren't only witnesses, but also participants," Mr. Yanukovych said before signing the National Unity Declaration.

"People spoke of justice, people spoke of a better life, people spoke of freedom, and so forth. These are all things that we hoped for and hope for in our lives. We want to build a just nation, we want to build an independent nation, we want to build a democratic nation."

All emotions aside, Mr. Yushchenko really did sell out the Orange Revolution, simply by giving his former enemy the right to refer to it in his speeches as if it's something he fought for.

To set the record straight, the Orange Revolution took place because people were absolutely terrified of a Viktor Yanukovych presidency.

Mr. Yanukovych's attempt to re-write history, and the spineless Ukrainian president allowing him to do it, is outrageous.

The good news is that barring a miracle, Mr. Yushchenko will not be re-elected.

His presidency may one day be remembered as a pathetic accident.

But then where can the average, patriotic-minded Ukrainian voter turn to for a legitimate political force to vote for?

Oleksander Moroz? Let's hope the March 2006 elections were also his swan song.

The Tymoshenko Bloc has a solid future, but its structure is very similar to Our Ukraine.

Aside from a handful of patriots and nationalists who are trotted off before television cameras, the Tymoshenko Bloc consists of many shady millionaires who are former associates of Mr. Kuchma and Kyiv clan boss Viktor Medvedchuk.

The Tymoshenko Bloc's illustrious ranks include Kostiantyn Zhevago, a notorious 32-year-old billionaire who got his start through connections in the Kyiv mafia.

Other Tymoshenko Bloc national deputies with ties to corrupt businessmen include Oleksander Abdulin and Kharkiv magnate Oleksander Feldman.

Back in March, if I were a Ukrainian citizen, I said I would have cast my vote for Our Ukraine because I thought (get this) that it was the best choice to prevent the Party of the Regions from coming to power.

I also criticized Yurii Kostenko for forming the Kostenko-Pliusch Bloc as a national-democratic force because it would siphon votes away from Our Ukraine.

However, it's now apparent that Mr. Kostenko was aware of something that many refused to see until now - that Our Ukraine is a pragmatic business clan.

As one veteran reporter told me, the main difference between Our Ukraine and the Party of the Regions is the latter doesn't shy away from aggression or violence.

Instead, Our Ukraine members masquerade in embroidered shirts and use the Ukrainian language publicly.

Petro Poroshenko and Yevhen Chervonenko don't speak Ukrainian when the cameras are turned off, and Oleksiy Ivchenko seems to think that being a nationalist means buying a new Mercedes every two years at the people's expense.

Like many, I wish I could take back my (symbolic) vote for Our Ukraine.

Rather than separating business from politics, Mr. Yushchenko's presidency has ensured that business clans will continue to have a lock on Ukrainian government.

Behind the scenes, it certainly appears that the "revolution" was in fact a battle between millionaires and billionaires, as long suspected.

The events of November and December 2004 were essentially a rock festival in the snow, cynics are starting to say.

Perhaps the worst thing Mr. Yushchenko has done is to devastate the hopes and moral grounding of average, decent-minded, hard-working Ukrainians looking for a better life in their own country so they won't have to go abroad to work as construction workers, cleaning ladies or prostitutes.

For these people, the near-term outlook is grim. Presidential elections won't roll around for another three years.

(Yes, it's shaping up to be a battle between Ms. Tymoshenko and Mr. Yanukovych).

Admitedly, Ukrainian consciousness is slowly evolving. Enough Ukrainians have been to Europe and have seen how a civilized society operates. Movies are being dubbed into Ukrainian, and more music on the radio is in Ukrainian.

But the Ukrainian language isn't going to ease the burden of the average Ukrainian who is struggling to survive in a faltering, inflationary economy.

Though Mr. Yushchenko seems to have done everything to wreck the Orange Revolution, he can never change the fact that millions of Ukrainians came to their capital city demanding that their government be held accountable to the people.

Ukrainians demonstrated to Europe that they hold Western values - democracy, rule of law, pluralism, tolerance, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly.

In addressing the Verkhovna Rada on August 4, Mr. Yushchenko mocked the idea of a second maidan, calling it a myth and a legend.

Perhaps that's his fear. Come sooner or later, however, his government will need to deliver the demands made on the maidan.

Otherwise, the real Ukrainian revolution may be yet to come.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, August 13, 2006, No. 33, Vol. LXXIV

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