Taras Kuzio’s Blog

Have they Learnt Nothing?

In the last week controversy again reigns over who will be voted speaker
during the opening of parliament on 23 November. The Our Ukraine-Peoples
Self Defense bloc (NUNS) voted for the leader of the Our Ukraine party
Vyacheslav Kyrlylenko to be their candidate for speaker. President Viktor
Yushchenko and the presidential secretariat were seemingly backing an
alternative candidate, National Security Council secretary Ivan Pliushch.

Why this confusion? Has Yushchenko not learnt a single lesson from last
year¹s post-election fiasco?

After the March 2006 elections, the orange forces (Our Ukraine, the Yulia
Tymoshenko bloc (BYuT) and the Socialists [SPU]) took 3 months to establish
a coalition. Then they were divided over whether the parliamentary speaker
should be Petro Poroshenko (supported by Our Ukraine) or Oleksandr Moroz
(supported by BYuT and SPU). The end result was the Socialists defection to
the Party of Regions, the collapse of the orange coalition and Viktor
Yanukovych¹s return as Prime Minister.

It seemed that Ukraine was repeating thosese Byzantine intrigues except that
now it is a clash over whether Pliushch or Kyrlyenko should be speaker.

The Segodnya newspaper (http://vybory.segodnya.ua/news/472824.html), owned by Renat Akhmetov,
claimed that the President is backing Pliushch¹s candidacy on 23 November
which will be followed by the formation of a grand coalition. The aim ­like
last year – is to prevent the return of Tymoshenko as Prime Minister. A BYuT
deputy even claimed that he had been offered by the Party of Regions the
princely sum of $10 million to not attend parliament.
http://www2.maidan.org.ua/news/view.php3?bn=maidan_free&key=1195732875&first
=1195738507&last=1195727760

If the president supports Pliushch NUNS will split ­ Yuriy Lutsenko has
already said that their candidate is Kyrlyenko. BYuT will never vote for
Pliushch because he has refused to sign the NUNS-BYuT coalition accord and
is antu-Tymoshenko.

As I have written
http://jamestown.org/publications_details.php?volume_id=420&issue_id=4286&ar
ticle_id=2372567

NUNS is an unstable factor in any coalition ­ orange or grand ­ because of
its internal divisions and the indecisiveness and the Byzantine intrigues of
the presidential team.

If Pliushch receives the support of the President he will be remembered with
having split for ever the orange forces on the third anniversary of the
Orange Revolution.