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UKRAINE: Ungovernable As Always

Analysis by Zoltán Dujisin

PRAGUE, May 2 2008 (IPS) - The conflict between the pro-Western allies governing Ukraine, President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yuliya Timoshenko, is escalating in a country made ungovernable by political ambitions.

The post-Soviet republic of 48 million has been the stage of constant power infighting since the 2004 elections and mass protests which brought pro-Western parties to power, in what was termed as the ‘Orange revolution’.

The first conflict came in 2005 when the President fired the charismatic Timoshenko from her prime ministerial post following mutual accusations of corruption.

However, the 2007 election forced them to join forces to impede the pro-Russian opposition of the Party of the Regions, led by former prime minister Viktor Yanukovich, from re-taking power.

Parliament has practically stopped working since the opposition, led by the Party of the Regions, led a protest against the leaders’ North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) aspirations.

Much of the Ukrainian public and media are convinced that the situation is to the benefit of all parties, whose deputies are postponing important decisions and instead pass laws favourable to the economic interests backing them.

Orange politicians, anticipating the 2009 presidential election, seem more interested in hardening their support base and grip on power.

Accused by her opponents of populism, Timoshenko’s plans to spend much of the budget on social programmes are being thwarted by the President who has challenged many of her decisions, and accuses her of causing inflation with her populist policies.

The popular Timoshenko has mostly avoided confrontation with the President, and blames the skyrocketing food prices on the previous Yanukovich-lead government.

“The constant infighting is likely to continue up until the 2009 presidential elections,” Balazs Jarabik, Ukraine expert at the Madrid-based Foundation for Foreign Relations and International Dialogue (FRIDE) told IPS.

Earlier this year Yushchenko’s appointment of Party of the Regions politician Rayisa Bohatyryova for secretary of the National Security and Defence Council, the President’s main instrument to influence the cabinet, came as a shock to many ‘orange politicians’, including Timoshenko.

Later, Timoshenko’s efforts to rid Ukraine of intermediaries in the gas market, causing an almost sure price hike for 2009, brought some hard reprimands from Yushchenko.

The latest quarrel comes as a result of Timoshenko’s endeavours to privatise a number of energy companies. Yushchenko again issued a decree suspending the sales citing lack of clarity, but it is believed the President mostly feared that the revenues would be use by the cabinet to fulfil Timoshenko’s populist election promises.

“President Yushchenko is in the harder situation,” Jarabik says. “Timoshenko is really popular, and one of the reasons behind her popularity is that she seems a victim of oligarch-type politics since she was sacked by Yushchenko in 2005.”

The President is perceived in Ukraine as a figure representing economic interests rather than the public, and his liberal economic views have seduced mostly the country’s business elite.

Even politicians from his own political force, Our Ukraine, are growing disillusioned and coming closer to Timoshenko.

The President has taken note of recent divisions within the relatively un-ideological Party of the Regions, where the moderate wing represented by Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man, is keen to improve its relations with power centres and get rid of the anti-oligarchic Timoshenko.

Yushchenko is believed to be behind a new political project called the United Centre, allegedly supported by prominent elements in the Party of the Regions and former Our Ukraine politicians.

The party would present itself in the 2009 presidential elections as a pro-presidential force bringing together voters from east and west, who tend to support radically different candidates.

But the flirting with the Party of the Regions has not done much for Yushchenko’s continuously declining ratings. Voters increasingly see the President as a power-hungry figure only rhetorically committed to the pro-Western and democratic values that brought him to power in 2004.

The President has been trying to pass a series of bills in parliament which would reinforce his powers, but Timoshenko’s and Yanukovich’s deputies rejected the bills.

Similarly, Yushchenko is pushing for a more presidential constitution to be adopted by referendum, but an Apr. 17 ruling by the country’s constitutional court has made this practically impossible.

Timoshenko and opposition leader Yanukovich have instead flirted with the idea of approving a parliamentary constitution in the chamber of deputies, although in reality both sides are still open to a negotiated solution with the President.

Yushchenko will have to make some tough choices soon. “The President can win re-election only if Timoshenko stays out of the race, and she will stay out only if she remains Prime Minister, and a strong one,” Jarabik told IPS.

“There is an enormous, double pressure on Yushchenko: the wish to win in 2009 press him to let Timoshenko stay, while the economic interest of those close to Yushchenko prompt him to oust her,” the analyst said.

In its present form, the constitution, which weakened presidential powers but is criticised for its lack of clarity, was the result of a compromise between political elites in 2004.

Various politicians are warning that the constant infighting and the adoption of a new constitution could lead the country into another election, the fourth in less than five years.

Such an outcome is likely to have a negative effect on the more than 12 percent of Ukrainians who, according to a pollster, would vote against all parties. Just a year ago this number was slightly above two per cent.