283 deputies give cabinet failing marks

At the moment when the digital board in the Verkhovna Rada session hall flashed the figure 290 — the number of people’s deputies who voted for a resolution to consider the governmental performance as unsatisfactory — it looked like the end for Viktor Yushchenko. While the cabinet crisis has unfolded, the situation has not improved. On the contrary, the champions of the prime minister’s resignation now appear more determined and will no longer agree to any compromise. If necessary, they can garner even 300 votes.

The behavior of the head of government and his obstinate defenders have only exacerbated the situation. Neither campaigns, rallies, pickets, nor collecting signatures has helped. The appeal to opponents to be scrupulous only meant that the latter were unscrupulous, so anti-cabinet majority members could only reply, “You’re one too.” If we did not know the true colors of the factions which forged the alliance in defense of the premier, we might even suspect them of intentionally pushing him out and leaving him no alternative but to head a non-Left opposition which will surely make its way into the future parliament.

Premier Yushchenko himself also failed to keep his emotions in check when, in reply to criticism, he passed the buck publicly and perhaps for the first time to President Kuchma, saying that when the deputies oppose the cabinet they are in fact opposing the president’s course. Who knows, perhaps those who had followed a hard anti- Kuchma line yesterday might take up the cudgels for the president sometime later?

It did not go that far. Ivan Pliushch did his utmost when he, bending the rules, hindered the Communists from railroading through a vote of no confidence the day before. But what can even such a crafty speaker do when the lineup of forces is clear and subject to no revision? The Socialists’ spectacular escapade when they unexpectedly voted alongside the “Communo-oligarchs” could only have a serious effect on relationships within the Forum of National Salvation. Leader of the UNP Sobor, Anatoly Matviyenko, has already said that the Socialist Party’s support of the resolution to consider government’s performance as unsatisfactory “is breaking up the united democratic opposition,” UNIAN reports. In addition, Oleksandr Moroz then tried to explain, butchering the language, his quite typical behavior: his faction had not voted against the Yushchenko cabinet but for assessing the transformation the government had been carrying out during the past year. More radical was the action of Rukh member Liliya Hryhorovych, who began pouring on herself right in the session room an unknown liquid until fellow Rukh member Ratushny rushed to her and foiled the attempt at self-immolation (see photo). Our parliament had never before witnessed such things. It is not ruled out that from now on the legislature’s guards will have to examine people not only for metal but also for gasoline and the session room will be embellished by a fireman on duty with a hose drawn.

And what about Mr. Yushchenko? He seems to have believed to the last ditch that they would not dare touch him. The shock the prime minister experienced deserves the pen of a classic. Do you remember the desperation of Nikolienka Rostov from War and Peace, when he first saw a weapon leveled at him: “What? They want to kill me? Me, whom everyone loves so much?”

The premier, who until recently aroused a certain measure of sympathy, has suddenly found himself in the epicenter of a political storm. Now it is impossible to explain his behavior. Everybody is tired of waiting for him to display the wisdom of compromise or courage of resignation. Thus a political great game is being played around but not with him. This game is certain to take many interesting and unexpected twists.