Viktor’s Fate is in Yulia’s Hands
This weekend I was in New York to give my fourth talk on the 2007 Ukrainian elections at the Ukrainian Institute of America, located in a beautiful old building in the upper east side of Manhattan (the equivalent of London’s exclusive Knightsbridge neighbourhood) and across from the world famous Metropolitan Museum. Earlier my talks on the elections were to the U.S. State Department in Washington, the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa and to the Ukrainian Federation in Philadelphia.
New York and Paris are cities that receive accolades of being places that one cannot but love and which never sleep. This is certainly true. If you cannot enjoy yourself in New York then the problem is not with the city but with yourself.
We spent the evening after the Ukrainian Institute talk in the Ukrainian area of the lower east side of Manhattan which is a very lively region (the fourth wave lives in a separate region of Brooklyn called Brighton Beach). The lower east side (East Village) became a Ukrainian area after World War II and today is an area of yupification-gentrification.
The message of my four talks was that I believe that the elections were a turning point in Ukraine’s history. After three free and fair elections since 2004 and four victories by democratic forces since 2002 Ukraine should no longer be perceived as a ‘post-soviet Eurasian’ country. The orange revolution began a psychological re-think of Ukraine as an East European country, a process that has been gradually consolidated through two subsequent free elections, a free media environment and open political competition.
That Ukraine’s political trajectory is so divergent from Russia and the remainder of the Eurasian CIS is now beyond any doubt. The process of Ukraine’s movement from Eurasian to European path began during Leonid Kuchma’s second term (Kuchmagate in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin in Russia) and was crowned with the orange revolution. As I remind my audiences, the orange revolution was Europe’s biggest non-violent protest since World War II. One in five Ukrainian participated in the orange revolution reaching as high as thirty percent of western Ukrainians to only five percent of easterners.
We should look at the 2007 elections as a crucial democratic turning point because of Yulia Tymoshenko’s astounding success in increasing her vote from 23 to 31 percent and of reducing BYuT’s gap with the Party of Regions from ten to only two percent. As I repeatedly stressed in my talks, BYuT and Tymoshenko saved the orange revolution (and the Orange Circle NGO in New York!). Without BYuT’s victory we would be now seeing a return of Yanukovych to government and the Anti-Crisis-2 coalition. What would be left of the orange revolution after five years of a third Yanukovych government?
Throughout September it became increasingly obvious that the Party of Regions went into a state of panic at BYuT’s growth in popularity in eastern Ukraine and in Ukraine as a whole.
This panic was evidenced in three ways. Firstly, the Party of Regions focused its criticism on BYuT and Tymoshenko personally. Secondly, as in 2004 the Party of Regions fell back on the Russian language and NATO when it is in panic mode. Thirdly, rumours abounded that the Party of Regions had cancelled their contract with the American political technologist Paul Manafort.
These elections also showed the continued failure of President Yushchenko to create a presidential party machine. The elections showed that there are only two political machines (in American terms) in Ukraine: BYuT and the Party of Regions.
Our Ukraine-Narodna Samoborona (NUNS) continues to be an eclectic mix of nine hetmans most of whom represent only virtual parties. Worst still they continue to be divided into pro-BYuT and pro-Regions wings (as does Yushchenko himself). Lutsenko’s demand that these nine hetmans merge into a single party after the elections is a very admirable strategy but I remain pessimistic that the hetmans will give up their mini-hetmanates.
The BYuT:Regions division in Our Ukraine has been there since it was founded in 2001. The head of the 2002 Our Ukraine election campaign, Petro Poroshenko, only moved to Our Ukraine after the then newly created Party of Regions failed to elect him as their leader. Poroshenko’s Solidarity party was one of five that merged to create the Party of Regions and after his failed leadership bid he established a new Solidarity party that he took to Our Ukraine. Poroshenko’s Solidarity faction in the Rada was created in 2000 with Kuchma’s support to counter balance the SDPUo.
Poroshenko and Yushchenko have both been long time allies of Volodymyr Lytvyn whom they offered to Kuchma to head the Our Ukraine bloc in 2002 (but Kuchma refused as he wanted him to head For a United Ukraine). Poroshenko and Zaporozhzhia steel magnate Khmelnytsky (in these elections on the Party of Regions list but previously he was a financier of the Greens and Women for the Future) reportedly financed the Lytvyn bloc in this years elections. That shows
Lytvyn’s continued adherence to multi-vectorism.
On the Wednesday after the elections I was by coincidence interviewing Hryhoriy Nemirya, one of the most talented intellectuals in BYuT, in his office at BYuT headquarters in the Podil district of Kyiv. During my interview Nemirya repeatedly received calls from very confused diplomats and journalists as to what Yushchenko had meant to say before he flew to Germany that day. Yushchenko had seemingly implied that consultations should begin on a grand coalition of NUNS, BYuT and Regions.
I attended Tymoshenko’s press conference later that day where she immediately rejected entering any coalition with Regions. NUNS reaction typically came many days later.
The orange coalition has a slim majority of only three deputies (228) which would only increase to 448 if the Lytvyn bloc joined. The Lytvyn bloc are unlikely to join any coalition as they will gain greater personal dividends by being ‘free agents’.
Will then a Rada vote to confirm Tymoshenko receive the required 226 minimum votes?
As after last year’s elections, there is opposition to an orange coalition within NUNS (Yuriy Yekhanurov), from NUNS business men (Poroshenko who is slated to be National Bank chairman), National Security Council secretary Ivan Pliushch and presidential secretary head Viktor Baloga. Clearly none of these opponents have learnt even elementary lessons from last year’s coalition making fiasco and how Yushchenko’s fate is now in Tymoshenko’s hands.
With only fifteen percent support Yushchenko (and a failed presidential party) he cannot win a second term in 2009 without the support of BYuT. A Western Ambassador in Kyiv told me that even with Tymoshenko’s support Yushchenko will still find it difficult to be re-elected. It is time that Tymoshenko’s opponents in the orange camp understood this fundamental reality of Ukrainian politics. Yushchenko has only a slim chance of not repeating Leonid Kravchuk’s fate who only served one term.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment