Taras Kuzio’s Blog

A Shameful Decision

Last year Donetsk oligarch Renat Akhmetov began to go public for the first time and to show a ‘human’ side to his public image. At a press conference he was asked what position he would like to have in the newly elected parliament to which he was elected for the fist time the Party of Regions? To which his reply was ‘head of the Committee on Organized Crime’. This failed attempt at cracking a joke did not go down very well among the journalists who were present.

Today, reading the Ukrainian news I thought there was another attempt at a bad joke. I read that the Yaroslav Mudry medal, third class, has been awarded to Mykhailo Potebenko for ‘his great personal contribution to the building of a law abiding state, the strengthening of legality and law abiding, and his long years of conscientious toil on the occasion of his 70th birthday’.
Thinking this was another attempt at a bad joke, I immediately thought of my own contributions to Ukraine’s comedy. Yuriy Krawchenko should be awarded a posthumous medal for his dedicated contribution to transforming Ukraine’s police force into a professional force, to the Party of Regions for its incessant devotion to upholding the concept of free elections, to Viktor Medvedchuk for his single-handled contribution to expanding media freedom, to Volodymyr Lytvyn for his campaign to remove plagiarism, to Leonid Kuchma for his contribution to enriching Ukraine’s language and, we should not forget, to Viktor Yushchenko for his contribution to stressing the importance of punctuality and decisiveness in the lives of Ukrainian citizens.

Joking aside, it is increasingly difficult to understand the policies undertaken by President Yushchenko as they are devoid of rationale, logic, vision and explanation. This, by the way, is not just my own view but that of Ukrainians visiting Washington and of those who follow Ukraine in this city.

His decision to award Potebenko a state medal is a disgrace and an insult to murdered journalist Heorhiy Gngadze and to Grand Prince Yaroslav Wise, who introduced Ukraine’s first book of laws, Ruska Pravda in the eleventh century. Potebenko would be disgraced in any Western democracy for covering up widespread, high level abuse of office when he was Prosecutor. His actions as Prosecutor during the investigation of the murder of Gongadze were a sham meant only to deflect blame away President Kuchma.
In the 2002 elections, Potebenko was elected on the Communist Party list. He was quickly expelled because he was a Kuchma-loyalist Trojan horse who provided the additional vote that permitted Lytvyn to be elected parliamentary chairman with 226 votes.

I am currently writing a book on Ukrainian politics from Kuchmagate to the Orange Revolution which has led me to re-read some of my files from that period. In re-reading the same files – after two years of the Yushchenko administration – I was struck to find different information than when I initially compiled the files in 2000-2003.

The files provide clues as to the granting of the award to Potebenko that lies in Yushchenko’s unwillingness to ever be a revolutionary or an oppositionist. In 2000-2001, Yushchenko and those political forces who joined Our Ukraine in 2002, refused to support the impeachment of Kuchma for which there was ample evidence that stretched beyond Gongadze’s murder. Kuchma’s representative in parliament, Roman Besmertnyi, threatened parliament with a state of emergency if it voted to impeach Kuchma.

Besmertnyi joined Our Ukraine in 2001 as somebody with a similar world view to Yushchenko; namely, that Our Ukraine should be a constructive (loyal) opposition that distanced itself from what they considered to be ‘hardliners’ (Yulia Tymoshenko). Yushchenko and Our Ukraine blamed Ukraine’s problems not on the ‘Good Tsar’ (Kuchma) but on the ‘Boyars’ (Krawchenko, Medvedchuk). In 2002 and again in 2006, Yushchenko and Our Ukraine chose to create a parliamentary coalition with pro-Kuchma loyalists rather than cooperate with the opposition and Orange partners in the Tymoshenko bloc and Socialists.

Yushchenko and Our Ukraine were forced to become temporary revolutionaries in 2004 against their will and natural inclinations. Their lack of revolutionary zeal can be seen in their weak reform programme, continued ‘Yuliaphobia’ and preference for reaching a deal with the Party of Regions.

In 2002-2003, Yushchenko and Our Ukraine fluctuated between working with the opposition and calling for a dialogue with the authorities. During the Orange Revolution, Yushchenko supported the opportunity of dialogue during the round table negotiations where he became what he achieved what he had always sought; namely, Kuchma’s anointed successor as the compromise reached at the dialogue guaranteed Yushchenko’s election on 26 December 2004. Tymoshenko, who had always been against dialogue with the ‘criminal’ authorities, was prevented from attending the round table negotiations.

The compromise reached at the dialogue that Yushchenko had always sought with the authorities has undermined his presidency. First, Prime Minister Yanukovych is the main beneficiary of constitutional reforms and polls show that they believe he is in charge of the country.

Second, the immunity granted to Kuchma came easily to Yushchenko and Our Ukraine as they had never condemned his abuse of office or his involvement in Gongadze’s murder. The Ukrainian book by M.I. Melnyk, Criminal Responsibility for Crimes against Election Laws, shows that almost all of the 1,297 cases brought by the Prosecutor in the 2004 presidential elections were against those executing fraud and not those who organized the fraud. The courts only found 265 guilty but gave them light sentences, such as suspended sentences, or they received amnesty.

The organizers are today in charge of Ukraine. Potebenko is a state hero. Could somebody please remind me again who won the 2004 elections?