Taras Kuzio’s Blog

Yushchenko and Baloga Cannot Hold Ukraine to Ransom

Ukraine is a country held hostage by Viktor Baloga and Viktor Yushchenko. One of the main reasons the country was pushed to pre-term parliamentary elections in autumn 2008 was Baloga’s desire to enter parliament and receive immunity.  Although he will do everything he can to stop it, he is scared of a victory in the upcoming elections by Yulia Tymohenko.
Baloga’s desire is matched by Yushchenko’s desire to also receive immunity as all Ukrainian presidents except Leonid Kravchuk have left office fearing for their future. Leonid Kuchma was given verbal immunity at the December 2004 round-tables that were ‘guaranteed’ by EU leaders and Svyatoslav Piskun who returned into the position of prosecutor a day after parliament voted for its package of legislative and constitutional changes on 8 December.
The unpopular Yushchenko fears there is nobody to give him verbal immunity and worst still nobody to ‘guarantee’ it.
Yushchenko has never listened to opinion polls and has always believed in his mission and the rightfulness of his course. He therefore also believes that he should continue to play an important role in Ukrainian politics either as  president in a second term (which with 3% popularity is highly unlikely) or as a parliamentary deputy.
In reality, Yushchenko has three options: disbanding parliament and introducing direct rule, following Kuchma in proposing constitutional changes that create a bicameral parliament and becoming a life-time senator or entering parliament through pre-term elections within United Centre or Our Ukraine. Of the three the last option is the most feasible.
If the last of the tree scenarios is the most likely why then are Ukrainian politicians supporting the holding of simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections? There are in fact five good reasons why holding pre-term parliamentary elections is a bad, unnecessary and wasteful idea.
First, it would require time-consuming constitutional and legislative changes when Ukraine should be focusing on dealing with the impact of the global crisis. Second, it would be expensive and, just like last years pre-term elections, unnecessary. While Ukraine is affected by the global crisis a better option than early elections is for the current parliamentary orange coalition  to be expanded again to grand by adding a fourth faction, the Party of Regions.
Third, simultaneous elections would mean nobody was in charge and that the authorities had gone on holiday.
Fourthly, the argument that pre-term elections would bring new blood into parliament is not convincing, except for those who want to see the populist-nationalist Svoboda enter parliament. Representatives of the rising young generation of politicians – Arseniy Yatseniuk, Anatoliy Grytsenko, Yuriy Lutsenko – are already in parliament or government. Leaving elections to be held until 2012 would permit this rising generation to build up their current weakly organised political forces and for other young generation to appear and follow suit.
Fifthly, why should Ukraine hold pre-term elections only in order for Yushchenko and Baloga to enter parliament to receive immunity? Yushchenko has nothing to fear from criminal charges once he loses the elections after which he should plan on adopting the role of an elder statesman. As for Baloga, he should be dealt with by the prosecutor’s office.