How to define the president’s style ?
The first anniversary of the Ukrainian president’s inauguration served as a pretext to consider the new leader’s style. Our discussion began with an article that was sent to the editors. Later The Day’s experts joined the debate. So, is he a peacemaker, a preacher, a reformist, an observer, or someone else? Without a doubt, the president’s style is still taking shape, and our society is also taking part in the process and to a certain degree is responsible for it. However, some of his traits can be singled out even now. We hope that our readers will continue the debate.
President Yushchenko’s style of governance is the subject of sharp debates. This is not coincidental, as Viktor Andriyovych’s style is markedly different from that of his predecessors.
First, it is a style germane to a free man, a free politician who is not bound by corporate interests, as in the case of Leonid Kravchuk (the old party nomenklatura) or Leonid Kuchma (the “Red directorate”), but exclusively national ones, i.e., the interests of the people who came to the Maidan at the end of 2004.
Second, President Yushchenko’s style is openness, honesty, and self-criticism. No other Ukrainian statesman or anyone who claims such a status today, especially individuals like Viktor Yanukovych, Yulia Tymoshenko, Nina Vitrenko, and several others, are even remotely as sincere with the people as Viktor Andriyovych.
Third, Yushchenko’s style is social-liberalism, in which two components are organically united: a high level of social protection for citizens and a civilized market economy for Ukrainian business. Most Ukrainian politicians are being pulled in one direction or another, often opposing the interests of those who work to those of employers (Vitrenko, Symonenko, et al.).
Fourth, Yushchenko’s style means the delimitation of the functions of government and business, as well as the abolition of the “administrative resource,” which is especially important on the eve of the elections. The current president’s predecessors did not even broach these subjects; for them nomenklatura-oligarchic authority was and remains true power.
Therefore, the style of President Yushchenko as a man, politician, and statesman is a fundamentally new style in the state leadership of Ukraine and its novelty requires some explanation.
Yushchenko’s opponents mostly try to portray him as “Kuchma-2,” primarily because he does not agree with the 2004 constitutional reform that took effect on Jan. 1, 2006. It is alleged that he gravitates toward strong and unlimited presidential powers that Leonid Kuchma de facto possessed. Nothing could be further from the truth. President Yushchenko’s goal is not power as such, but an opportunity to implement the people’s will expressed during the dramatic elections of 2004. We see that the president’s acts can be contested in court (as in the case of Sviatoslav Piskun). The president himself has nowhere to go to restore constitutional legality, which happened when parliament passed the unconstitional resolution dismissing Yuriy Yekhanurov’s government on Jan. 10, 2006, because for the last three months our parliament has been refusing to swear in the appointed justices of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine. This is how Yushchenko’s gravitation toward unlimited presidential authority looks in practice.
As for the constitutional reform, it must be considered in greater detail. If Kuchma’s nomenklatura-oligarchic regime really wanted to change the political system, it could have done so many times during the 10 years of his presidency. But the crux of the matter is that his regime, while pushing through the constitutional reform in 2003-04, had in mind not itself but the democratic forces, which after the relative victory in the parliamentary elections of 2002 were really claiming the president’s mace. In other words, this reform was meant to restrict democracy, not the authoritarian regime.
However, for a real democracy strong presidential powers are no obstacle, since there are strong counterweights to these powers in the state and society: parliament, the judicial branch, the media, political parties, etc. We have seen that in a true democracy, as in the case of Yushchenko’s current government, these means of counteraction not only work but also at times paralyze the entire political system.
Can one visualize parliament resisting the swearing in of Constitutional Court justices under Kuchma-yes, providing one is a visionary-or any of the media permitting themselves to criticize the conduct of Kuchma family members? Everyone understands that on the heels of such criticism journalists would encounter a great many problems, including criminal prosecution and physical intimidation.
But do we appreciate what we have? Are we prepared to support those who offer us a different, more interesting, life, and, of course, new rules of the game?
Unfortunately, we don’t always, and therefore President Yushchenko is constantly forced to make compromises, even with his past political adversaries, and then is lambasted by his past comrades in arms.
Yet every unbiased citizen realizes that meeting some politicians halfway and parting ways with others is sometimes necessary in order to implement not illusionary but the real Maidan ideals that are meant to last for years and decades. Only then will the president have authority in the eyes of the people; his authority will be effective when he will be waging his own policies, not someone else’s, and rallying around it the entire diverse nation.
President Yushchenko’s style is bringing Ukraine closer to the newly established democracies of Central and Eastern Europe and laying the real foundations of a liberal-democratic - in other words, European - society in Ukraine. The task of the other branches of power and institutions of a civil society is to respond to the president’s political impulses and help him guide this state toward Europe, not Eurasia, as demonstrated by certain political forces on the eve of the 2006 parliamentary elections. We hope that a significant part of these impulses will be reflected in the president’s annual message to the Verkhovna Rada.
President Yushchenko’s biggest problems are not his entourage, as some politicians and media people often allege. These are problems that stem from the new rules on the political playing field, where most players, unfortunately, want to play by the old rules, regardless of the constitutional reform, and so on. Those who oppose the new rules are focusing special attention on the personal relations between the president and his team.
What we actually need is a real, not make-believe, constitutional reform that would help modernize the state, society, and the political players. To this end the president’s associates should form an all-Ukraine association of political forces that are prepared to carry out a truly democratic political reform, which they could launch after winning the 2006 parliamentary elections.
Another problem faced by President Yushchenko is the formation of a new apparatus of state governance that would correspond to the requirements of state management and a democratic and social state ruled by law. Here it is necessary to begin by changing the curricula of institutions of higher learning and finish by developing modern retraining programs for high-ranking bureaucrats, separating business from power structures, instituting real stimuli in the remuneration of government officials and functionaries in local self-governments, and, most importantly, by introducing new relations between officials and ordinary citizens according to the principle that the citizen is always right. If a citizen is truly mistaken about something, then it is necessary to explain this in a very delicate manner. In a word, we need a new administrative reform that, unlike Kuchma’s reform of 1998, would focus not on the formal organization of the executive authority but on modernizing relations between the government and its citizens. Then this reform will be a success and in keeping with President Yushchenko’s style.
