“A Real Mess”

The phrase in the headline is the way Volodymyr Fesenko, president of the Penta Center for Applied Political Research, characterized the current situation in Ukrainian politics during a roundtable on the post-election climate in this country and outlooks for the future. The political scientist noted that two-thirds of Ukraine’s parliamentarians do not know what to do and whom to side with, and “are like blind people walking along a wall, hoping to reach some place.” This goes a long way to explaining, Fesenko says, the growth of a new “center” in parliament around Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn, whom many of the distressed regard as a sort of a “quiet haven” that offers a guarantee against possible reprisals and a chance to do well in the 2006 parliamentary elections.

Most of the discussion participants were of the opinion that the weakest link in the Ukrainian political chain is the opposition, now reduced to the Communist Party. Centrist parties “displayed an ideological vacuum” and “political bankruptcy” when they voted for Yuliya Tymoshenko as prime minister and for the new Cabinet’s program, Fesenko says. So far the members of these factions do not know how to go about combining their business activities with their status as the official opposition. Yet, if they see that the new leadership is not pursuing any repressive policies toward the “dissidents,” then the “new opposition” in the person of, say, the Social Democratic Party (United) and the Party of Regions will stand a fair chance of filling the niche they have staked out — especially since Ukrainian society “will very soon display the tendency of being disappointed with the new government.” Still, analysts think that the most crucial question is who is going to lead this political force. The defeated presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych stands a rather slim chance of leading the new opposition. If the Party of Regions leader begins to play a game of his own, he will come unstuck and finally ruin his career, but if he “remains a puppet,” he may well prove useful to those fellow party members who have deserted him. “Whatever the case, Yanukovych still retains a serious resource, his name,” said political scientist Volodymyr Nahirny, “and this resource may well attract other ones, for example, the managerial talent of Viktor Medvedchuk. I would not be surprised if a bloc called something like ‘To Victory with Viktor Yanukovych” crops up on the eve of the parliamentary elections. At the same time, another roundtable participant, Regions of Ukraine faction member Volodymyr Zubanov, assessed Yanukovych’s prospects as “unfavorable.” According to Zubanov, Yanukovych’s electorate in the Donetsk region is very indignant at his latest announcement that he intends to cooperate with the new government. The parliamentarian also confirmed other experts’ opinions that the place of a democratic opposition may remain vacant at least until the parliamentary elections.