Yuschenko: historical times

19 May 2007

In the country outside the scars of Ukraine’s political past are resurfacing. Just like Yuschenko’s cosmetics, the presidential election of 2005 and the parliamentary one of 2006 provided no more than a veneer of normality; failing to heal the rift that splits the country between east and west; between European democracy and Russian stability. ‘We are living in historical times,’ says Yuschenko, with typical understatement. In the past few weeks, he has dissolved the parliament and sacked three constitutional court judges in a desperate attempt to prevent his old nemesis, the Russian-backed Prime Minister Victor Yanukovich, from seizing power.

What drove the President to take such drastic action? Yuschenko explains that his rival had never accepted the result of the Orange revolution. Not content with controlling the government, Yanukovich had been buying up MPs from the other parties in an effort to overturn the constitution and remove Yuschenko’s presidential veto: ‘The will of the electorate counted for nothing.... First two MPs were purchased, then another two, then 11, then they announced another 25. The goal was to have 300, which was a direct threat to the constitution.’

One of the strangest features of Ukranian politics is the return to power of Yanukovich — barely a year after his first attempt to grab the presidency was overturned. Most observers had expected Yuschenko to form an Orange coalition together with his fellow revolutionary leader — the Princess Leah look-alike Yulia Tymoschenko. But Yuschenko failed to strike a deal with the talented and populist Tymoschenko, whose approach to coalition politics has been compared — even by her friends — with that of a black widow spider. He still blames her for their failure to find a deal: ‘As President I have given all the chances to the Orange coalition.... The contradictions that appeared were not the President’s fault.’ And so he ended up in government with his bitterest rival.

Yuschenko’s story is the tale of a good man in a bad system. In European democracies, hung parliaments lead to coalitions around compromise programmes. In Ukraine there is just a struggle for power: uncontrollable, unlimited and unending. Although Yanukovich said he would respect Yuschenko’s pro-Western policies, he used his parliamentary votes to block them — and then tried to unpick the agreement on power-sharing. In this struggle nothing was outside the realm of political competition: MPs, the judges, even the constitution were seen as political tools that could be bought in the pursuit of power. That attitude, according to Yuschenko, is the root of today’s crisis.