Karatnycky versus Motyl
April 13, 2010 – 12:09 amRE-INTRODUCING VIKTOR YANUKOVYCH
Five years in the political wilderness has taught Ukraine’s apparent next
president that the world does not end with the democratic rotation of power.
Opinion Europe, Analysis & Commentary: By Adrian Karatnycky
The Wall Street Journal, NY, NY, Monday, February 8, 2010 But, notwithstanding the chaos, “Orange” rule also deepened Ukraine’s political pluralism, and allowed time for the political transformation of Mr. Yanukovych and his Party of Regions.
[1] First, the oligarchs around Mr Yanukovych became economically transparent. They hired first-rate managers, rigorously paid their taxes, promoted sophisticated philanthropy, and became globalized in their tastes and manners. Just as importantly, they now see their future prosperity integrally linked to a reduction in corruption, the expansion of free market policies, lower taxes, fewer regulations, and Ukraine’s eventual integration into the rich EU market.
[2] Second, Mr. Yanukovych and other Regions leaders have become public personalities irrespective of some rough edges, and have accustomed themselves and found success in the democratic rules of the game. Five years in the political wilderness has taught them that the world does not end with the democratic rotation of power, nor does it put anyone’s massive fortunes at risk.
[3] Third, after his political setbacks in 2005 and 2007, Mr. Yanukovych and his allies were treated dismissively and—say some of his closest confidantes—humiliated by Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin. This, and Mr. Putin’s tilt last year toward Ms. Tymoshenko, have created distance between the Regions leadership and Moscow. Coupled with Kyiv’s need to extract Ukraine from its deep economic decline, and a state budget deficit of 12%, this means the world can expect Mr. Yanukovych to eagerly work for close cooperation with Europe and the U.S., not to mention the International Monetary Fund.
Indeed, the signals emanating from Mr. Yanukovych’s closest aides, as well as key leaders from the Our Ukraine coalition with whom I met last week in Kyiv, suggest the new president and the government he will try to bring into office will likely represent a broad-based mix of longtime Regions party officials, and competent financial and economic technocrats and market reformers—including some from the former Yushchenko team.
For instance, there is a good chance that banker Serhiy Tyhypko, who finished a strong third in the presidential race, will be offered the prime minister’s post rather than Mr. Yanukovych’s longtime ally and campaign director, Mykola Azarov, who is also under serious consideration. The odds of a broad-based coalition are reinforced by the modesty of Mr. Yanukovych’s victory, clear-cut though it was.
At the same time, the agreement on uranium was a sign that Yanukovych is aiming to maintain a balance in Ukraine’s relationships with Europe, the U.S. and Russia. Strong and pragmatic relations with the U.S. – as with Europe – are essential for the new Yanukovych team, which understands that U.S. support is crucial within international financial institutions. The visit also suggests that Yanukovych appears to understand that Ukraine will have a stronger hand in shaping its relationship with Russia in the context of deepening relations with Brussels and the Washington.
As Jackson Diehl, a Washington Post editor and acute foreign policy analyst, noted: “By quickly accepting [Obama’s proposal to get rid of Ukraine’s highly enriched uranium], Yanukovych built a link to the White House to balance his longstanding connection to the Kremlin – and managed to stand out among the dozens of leaders jamming the luxury hotels of downtown Washington Monday.”
In addition to participating in the summit and meeting with Obama, Yanukovych held talks with International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The Ukrainian president paved the way for the upcoming visit of Deputy Prime Minister Sergiy Tigipko to the World Bank-IMF annual gathering. He also held bilateral discussions with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, President Nicholas Sarkozy of France, Prime Minister Manhmohan Singh of India, President Hu Jintao of China, Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.
And the schedule included a substantive meeting with members of the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council, an interview with CNN and a discussion with the editors of the Washington Post, who received a clear-cut message from Ukraine’s president: “Yanukovych’s ambition [is] to position Ukraine between Russia and the NATO powers – outside the Western alliance, but also not part of a Russian sphere of influence.”
No less energetic have been his other foreign travels, which have included an early trip to Brussels that yielded the most concrete official expression of Europe’s commitment to Ukraine’s eventual membership in the European Union, as well as two “atmospheric,” rather than substantive, visits to Russia and one to Kazakhstan.
To be sure, there are strong advocates inside the Party of Regions and among its coalition Communist partners, of a tilt toward Russia. But the early signs are that Yanukovych is resisting these lobbies and is seeking to create a genuine equilibrium that will allow Ukraine to protect its sovereignty as he works to rebuild the economy and move the country toward the aim of eventual membership in the European Union.
Ukraine’s president is yet to be tested by conflict or crisis. And his efforts to maintain equally friendly relations with Russia, Europe and the U.S. may in the end prove unsustainable. It is also an open question whether Ukraine’s security neutrality can be sustained and its security ensured solely by relying on its own defense capabilities.
While one swallow does not a spring make, the early weeks of Yanukovych’s presidency –and his U.S. visit – suggest that Ukraine’s international relations are moving forward in a balanced fashion. So, too, are the first indicators of Ukraine’s commitment to economic reform, fiscal stability and cooperation with international financial institutions.
Such pragmatism creates some hope that Ukraine’s new president will in the end also pursue a similar tack on matters of national identity and reject the divisive cultural and linguistic agenda being pursued by some in the current government.
These, at least, are the hopes and signals that come from a substantive and successful first foray to a city that is one the centers of our globalized world.
Adrian Karatnycky is a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council of the U.S. and the managing partner of Myrmidon Group LLC.
Wall Street Journal Europe, March 30, 2010
Ukraine’s Democracy in Danger
By Alexander J. Motyl
As Ukraine’s recently elected President Viktor Yanukovych prepares to
visit Washington in April, he will aim to project an image of stability,
confidence, and control. In reality, Mr. Yanukovych has committed a series
of mistakes that could doom his presidency, scare off foreign investors,
and thwart the country’s modernization.
Mr. Yanukovych’s first mistake was to violate the constitution by changing
the rules according to which ruling parliamentary coalitions are formed,
making it possible for his party to take the lead in partnership with
several others, including the Communists. That move immediately galvanized
the demoralized opposition that clustered around his challenger in the
presidential elections, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
His second mistake was to appoint as prime minister his crony Mykola
Azarov, a tough bureaucrat whose name is synonymous with government
corruption, ruinous taxation rates, and hostility to small business. The
appointment dispelled any hopes Ukrainians had that Mr. Yanukovych would
promote serious economic reform.
His third mistake was to agree to a cabinet consisting of 29 ministers as
opposed to 25 before-an impossibly large number that will only compound
its inability to engage in serious decision making. That the cabinet
contained not one woman-Mr. Azarov claimed that reform was not women’s
work-only reinforced the image of the cabinet as a dysfunctional boys’
club.
His fourth mistake was to appoint two nonentities-a former state farm
manager, and an economics graduate from a Soviet agricultural institute-to
head the ministries of economy and finance. Meanwhile, he created a
Committee on Economic Reform, consisting of 24 members, to develop a
strategy of economic change. The size of the committee guarantees that it
will be a talk shop, while the incompetence of the two ministers means
that whatever genuinely positive ideas the Committee develops will remain
on paper.
His fifth mistake was to appoint the controversial Dmytro Tabachnik as
minister of education. Mr. Tabachnik has expressed chauvinist views that
democratically inclined Ukrainians regard as deeply offensive to their
national dignity, such as the belief that west Ukrainians are not real
Ukrainians; endorsing the sanitized view of Soviet history propagated by
the Kremlin; and claiming that Ukrainian language and culture flourished
in Soviet times. Unsurprisingly, many Ukrainians have reacted in the same
way that African Americans would react to KKK head David Duke’s
appointment to such a position-with countrywide student strikes,
petitions, and demonstrations directed as much at Mr. Yanukovych as at Mr.
Tabachnik.
These five mistakes have effectively undermined Mr. Yanukovych’s
legitimacy within a few weeks of his inauguration. The 45.5% of the
electorate that voted against him now feels vindicated; the 10-20% that
voted for him as the lesser of two evils now suspect that their fears of
Mrs. Tymoshenko’s authoritarian tendencies were grossly exaggerated. And
everyone worries that Mr. Yanukovych and his band of Donbas-based “dons”
are ruthlessly pursuing the same anti-democratic agenda that sparked the
Orange Revolution of 2004.
Several other key dismissals and appointments have only reinforced this
view. The director of the Security Service archives-a conscientious
scholar who permitted unrestricted public access to documentation
revealing Soviet crimes-has been fired. The National Television and Radio
Company has been placed in the hands of a lightweight entertainer expected
to toe the line. Most disturbing perhaps, several of Mr. Yanukovych’s
anti-democratically inclined party allies have been placed in charge of
provincial ministries of internal affairs-positions that give them broad
scope to clamp down on the liberties of ordinary citizens.
Democratically inclined Ukrainians are increasingly persuaded that Mr.
Yanukovych wants to become Ukraine’s version of Belarus’s dictator,
Alexander Lukashenko. But Mr. Yanukovych’s vision of strong-man rule rests
on a strategic, and possibly fatal, misunderstanding of Ukraine.
First, the Orange Revolution and five years of Viktor Yushchenko’s
presidency empowered the Ukrainian population, endowing it with a
self-confidence that it lacked before 2004 and consolidating a vigorous
civil society consisting of professionals, intellectuals, students, and
businesspeople with no fear of the powers that be. Mr. Yanukovych’s
efforts to establish strong-man rule already are, and will continue to be,
resisted and ridiculed by the general population.
Second, Ukraine’s shambolic government apparatus cannot serve as the basis
of an effective authoritarian government. Tough talk alone will fail to
whip a bloated bureaucracy into shape. Worse, Ukraine’s security service
and army are a far cry from those in Belarus. Mr. Yanukovych may try to
emulate Mr. Lukashenko, but without a strong bureaucracy and coercive
apparatus, he will fail.
Third, with an ineffective cabinet, all decision making will be
concentrated in Mr. Yanukovych’s hands. Even if one ignores his deficient
education and poor grasp of facts, Mr. Yanukovych’s appointment of Mr.
Tabachnik demonstrates that Ukraine’s president is either completely out
of touch with his own country, or arrogantly indifferent to public
opinion.
Fourth, Ukraine is still in the throes of a deep economic crisis. If Mr.
Yanukovych does nothing to fix the economy, Ukraine may soon face default,
and mass discontent among his working class constituency in the southeast
is likely. If Mr. Yanukovych does embark on serious reforms, that same
constituency will suffer and strikes are certain. So negotiating the
crisis will require popular legitimacy-which Mr. Yanukovych is rapidly
squandering; a strong government-which he does not have; and excellent
judgment-which is also missing from the equation.
Indeed, if Mr. Yanukovych keeps on making anti-democratic mistakes, he
could very well provoke a second Orange Revolution. But this time the
demonstrators would consist of democrats, students, and workers. The
prospect of growing instability will do little to attract foreign
investors, while declining legitimacy, growing incompetence, and tub
thumping will fail to modernize Ukraine’s industry, agriculture, and
education. Mr. Yanukovych could very well be an even greater failure as
president than Mr. Yushchenko.
Although the outlook is grim, it is not yet hopeless for Ukraine’s new
president. He could still grasp a modest victory from the jaws of an
embarrassing defeat by ruling as the president, not of Donetsk, but of all
Ukraine. All he has to do is restrain his appetite for power and learn to
rule with the opposition and with the population. It’s not so
complicated-it’s democracy.
Mr. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark.
7 Responses to “Karatnycky versus Motyl”
Its pretty obvious that in reading the above commentary that US Analysts are far removed form what is going on in Ukraine. Adrian Karatnycky should stop talking to Our Ukraine leaders. They are on tech outer with recent public opinion polls listing Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine with less then 1.6%. If fresh parliamentary elections were held today Party of Regions would hold, an absolute majority of the Parliament and with the support of Sergei Tigipko secure a constitutional majority in excess of 300 votes.
A good article worth reading is the view expressed by Andreas Umland and published by Kyivpost Oped April 12, 2010
Yanukovych’s revenge: Why and how Ukraine’s democracy is declining
April 12 at 15:16 | Andreas Umland
Largely unnoticed in the West, Ukraine’s new president, Viktor Yanukovych, brought to power an illegitimate government in March. Though being installed via a seemingly orderly parliamentary procedure, the current Ukrainian cabinet headed by Prime Minister Mykola Azarov has no proper popular mandate. How did that come about?
Ukraine has a proportional electoral system with closed lists. This means that voters do not elect individual candidates, but can only approve of pre-determined lists presented to them by various political parties or blocs. The members of the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, become deputies only in so far as they are included in their bloc’s or party’s lists the composition of which is beyond the reach of voters. The electoral success and resulting faction size of parties or blocs in parliament is thus mainly determined by the attractiveness of their ideologies, and charisma of their speakers.
Individual party list members play little role in Ukrainian parliamentary elections, which are contests between large political camps and their more or less magnetic leaders. This is in contrast to majoritarian or mixed electoral systems where the local standing of regional – and not only national – political leaders plays a prominent role in determining the makeup of the national legislature.
For better or worse, Ukraine has abandoned first its early post-Soviet majoritarian and later its mixed electoral systems. It now conducts (except for a 3 percent barrier) purely proportional parliamentary elections in which individual list members, other than a small circle of nationally known party leaders, play little role during the electoral campaigns. Accordingly, Ukraine’s Constitution ascribes to parliament’s factions, and not to members of parliament, a decisive role in the formation of a governmental coalition. A government has to be based on the support of registered parliamentary groups, and cannot be voted into office by individual MPs.
True, such a rule gives excessive power to faction leaders and belittles the role of the deputy as a people’s representative. Yet, the factions’ exclusive role in government coalition formation is consistent with, and follows from, the electoral system.
In so far as voters are not given a chance to express their opinion on individual candidates, the elected deputies have to act first and foremost as faction members. Within proportional electoral systems, it is not them as individuals, but their factions as fixed political collectives recruited from prearranged lists that represent the voters will, in legislature.
In spite of these circumstances, Yanukovych, on March 11, pushed through a government that is based only partly on party-factional support. The three factions that form the current coalition do, by themselves, not have a majority, in the Verkhovna Rada. Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, Ukraine’s Communist Party, and Parliamentary Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn’s Bloc comprise only 219 of the 450 deputies. Yanukovych’s Party (thought that it has) solved this problem by luring away a number of deputies from its Orange competitors – the Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko and pro-[Viktor] Yushchenko alliance “Our Ukraine – People’s Self-Defense” – in order to form a government coalition.
This happened in spite of the fact that these two factions represent exactly those political forces which, during the last parliamentary of 2007, stood in open opposition to Yankovych’s Party of Regions. When voters decided to cast their votes for the Tymoshenko Bloc and “Our Ukraine – People’s Self-Defense,” in 2007, they were clearly also voting against Yanukovych’s Party of Regions.
Nevertheless, on March 11, 12 deputies who had become MPs on the tickets of the two Orange blocs signed the coalition agreement that laid the ground for subsequent transfer of almost all executive prerogatives to the Party of Regions. The formerly Orange deputies did so against the expressive will of their initial factions and in manifest disregard of their voters’ mandate.
Party transfers during legislative period, to be sure, are not unusual, in young democracies. They occasionally even happen in consolidated democracies, like the Federal Republic of Germany which has also a proportional electoral system (a partly personalized ne though).
However, in mature democracies, such political transgressions usually concern only isolated MPs who choose to pass from one to another faction, for personal reasons. Therefore, the German basic law, for instance, upholds the MP’s unrestricted “freedom of the mandate,” in spite of the fact that half of the members of the Bundestag are not elected directly, but collectively, on their respective parties’ tickets – much like in Ukraine. The idea that a relatively large group of MPs could be purposefully drawn from one to another party in order to effectively cancel election results is so absurd that it has received little attention from constitutional engineers, and political comparativists, in Western states. Should such consequential change in the political allegiance of numerous deputies happen, the violation of the voters’ will would be so flagrant that it appears a waste of time to seriously consider such a strange and hypothetical case.
In unconsolidated pluralistic states, such things, however, do happen. Moreover, as the pre-history of the Orange Revolution showed, Yanukovych and Company are no democrats. Their poorly disguised falsification of the first two rounds of the 2004 presidential elections, as well as numerous related actions, demonstrated the Party of Regions’ ambivalent relationship to democratic norms. Moreover, Ukraine is not yet a consolidated democracy with a deeply ingrained rule of law. It is a state still in the process of formation, and one of the countries that has, worldwide, suffered most from the financial crisis. Judicial review has started to function in post-Soviet Ukraine, as the Constitutional Court’s intervention during the Orange Revolution showed. Yet, the results of the Constitutional Court’s today review on the new Ukrainian government coalition will hardly solve the current conflict between the political camps, as it did in 2004.
Its latest ruling is a rather strange development in so far as the Constitutional Court did already rule on the issue of whether individual MPs may participate in government coalition building. In its decision of 17 September 2008, the Court ruled that “[…] only those people’s deputies of Ukraine who are members of the deputies factions that form a coalition can enter the ranks of that coalition. The membership of the people’s deputies of Ukraine in these factions underlines the exceptional role of deputies factions in the formation of a coalition of deputies factions.”
In view of this ruling, the current government would appear as not only illegitimate from a democratic point of view, but also as illegal from a juridical standpoint. However, the new ruling renounces the quoted earlier one. It, moreover, puts under question all previous rulings by the Constitutional Court which, presumably, also could be revoked by the Court after a second hearing.
What also follows is an unsettling of the party-electoral system of Ukraine. If elections continue to be held in a purely proportional mode, voters will become unsure what their votes actually imply and will eventually lead to. As voters can only approve of closed party lists, they have no opportunity to punish individual deputies who have renounced the mandate they had received during the previous elections, i.e. who have, in fact, betrayed their voters. Worse, voters of those parties or blocs that suffer most from enticement of their deputies by competing parliamentary factions will ask themselves why they are voting at all. If the deputies whom they delegate to parliament may later be poached by the opposing camp, and switch political sides, it makes little sense to send them to the Verkhovna Rada, in the first place. Today’s renunciation of the Constitutional Court’s decision of September 2008 makes Yanukovych’s Party of Regions a “double-winner”: it can keep its hold on the executive with the help of deserters from other factions while at the same time undermining the electoral base of its political competitors. Democratic elections’ primary function of constituting a transparent link and effective feedback mechanism between the population and government has been diminished.
Ukraine’s decision makers have to understand that only semi-formal observance of democratic rules and merely rhetorical acceptance of political pluralism will be insufficient to keep the country on track to eventual European Union membership – an aim to which all relevant political actors seem committed. Oral agreement to certain actions even by official Western delegations will not be enough to ensure sustainability in Ukraine’s move towards Europe, for the next years.
It is possible that the government formation of March 11 will lead to a downgrading of Ukraine in future democracy rankings, like those of Freedom House. Should Ukraine, for instance, be relegated by Freedom House from “free” to “partly free,” this could have grave political repercussions for Ukraine. The Western public would again start to see Ukraine as a country “in between” democracy and authoritarianism, and not as a state firmly committed to European values. Ukraine would slide into the category of countries like Moldova, Georgia or Armenia – semi-democracies that the EU hopes to include some day, but regards today far from ripe to be offered a membership perspective. It is not some selected ambassadors or EU officials, but the people of Europe – including the Ukrainians themselves! – who the new political leadership of Ukraine will have to convince of its commitment to democracy and the rule of law.
Andreas Umland, is general editor of the scholarly book series “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society” (www.ibidem-verlag.de/spps.html).
By UkrToday on Apr 17, 2010
Its worth repeating my previous post dated March 13. (Copy below)
Adding to this I think you should also read Article 81 of Ukraine’s Constitution. (This received a precursory mention by the Constitutional Court in its recent ruling).
The option is there for Tymoshenko and Yushchenko to enforce party discipline by withdrawing dissident members mandate and right to remain a member of the Parliament.
Article 81 requires that a member of Parliament must jion and remain a member of the faction that elected them. They can not sit on the cross benches as independents without the consent of the faction that elected them. Should they not remain members or are expelled from the parliamentary faction they lose their mandate and entitlement to remain members of Parliament.
Tymoshenko should also appeal to Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and request that the Venice Commission review the recent ruling.
- March 13, 2010 -
The following rulings of Ukraine’s Constitutional Court as these may give some insight into the possible legality of the new governing coalition
1.
CCU Document Link: 12-rp-2008.doc
Summary to the Decision of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine no.12-rp/2008 dd. June 25, 2008 on the case upon a constitutional petition of 50 national deputies of Ukraine concerning compliance with the Constitution of Ukraine of Articles 13.5 and 13.6 of the Law of Ukraine “On the Status of a National Deputy of Ukraine”, Article 61.4 of the Rules of Procedure of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and official interpretation of the provisions of Articles 81.2.6, 81.6, 83.6 of the Constitution…
http://ukraineccu.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/decision-of-the-constitutional-court-of-ukraine-id-12-rp-2008-doc/
2.
CCU Document Link: 16-rp-2008.doc
Summary to the Decision of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine no.16-rp/2008 dated September 17, 2008 on the case upon the constitutional petition of 105 People’s Deputies of Ukraine concerning official interpretation of provisions of Articles 83.6, 83.7 and 83.9 of the Constitution of Ukraine (case on coalition of deputy factions in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine)
http://ukraineccu.wordpress.com/2008/09/17/decision-of-the-constitutional-court-of-ukraine-id-16-rp-2008-doc/
By UkrToday on Apr 18, 2010
The question begs why do the factions not throw the defectors out? And, why does Tymoshenko not get one of the seats and thereby get back into the Rada
By Taras Kuzio on Apr 18, 2010
usb flash memory
http://www.egoingspot.com/index.php?cPath=27
By egoingspot on Apr 29, 2010
[The question begs why do the factions not throw the defectors out? And, why does Tymoshenko not get one of the seats and thereby get back into the Rada]
A good question one that still have not been actioned. The fact is if fresh parliamentary elections were held today the opposition would be decimated and Or of Regions would secure an absolute majority in their on wright and a constitutional majority with the support of Sergei Tipiko.
Such is the legacy left behind by Yushchenko.
Ukraine had the opportunity to undertake reform but Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine opposed democratic reform at every turn.
first in 2006 hen they refused to support a “Orange coalition” following their success at the 2006 parliamentary elections.
Already Yushchenko has been forgotten. His parties support base has slumped to below 1.5% and if fresh elections were held now Our Ukraine would no longer hold representation.
It is a reflection on the Ukrainian system that the Prime minister of the day is not a member of Parliament. It is also of concern that the opposition spokesperson is also not a member of Parliament. Tymoshenko has the ability to address this is and the question needs to be asked why has she not acted to restore her parliamentary status? Her standing in the polls has dropped to below 13%
By UkrToday on Jul 3, 2010
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By Malaktilara on Aug 22, 2010
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By Tojale on Aug 28, 2010