For the authors and actors in the cassette scandal: The weaker the president, the easier it is to Redistribute the niches of power
What we have now is a confrontation, if not a crisis, between groups in the branches of government rather than between the branches themselves. The parliamentary majority is completely different from what it was a year ago: it is now purely situational. This is the conclusion one can draw after Verkhovna Rada again failed last Thursday to put on the agenda the bill on the parliamentary majority and opposition, conceived as one of the “implementation documents.” The Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) and Reforms Congress factions, as well as the Left, kept their promise to vote down any bill until a decision is made to fire Prosecutor General Mykhailo Potebenko. Failure to implement the referendum results could quite possibly destroy the majority itself: in that case all we can do is wait for Speaker Ivan Pliushch to keep the promise he gave on January 11 to resign from office. Of course, Ukrainian political life might undergo radical changes in the next few days as a result of unconventional steps.
The mass rallies and demonstrations organized by oblast and district administrations “in defense of the constitutional system” and held last Wednesday to show grass-root anger over the behavior of parliament deputies and other “destructive forces” have not reversed the further deepening of a crisis in this country’s higher echelons of power. These rallies, like the previous anti- Kuchma actions initiated by Oleksandr Moroz’s followers, could not significantly influence the course of events and the lineup of forces at the top, for the true causes of the crisis are rooted far deeper than in the primitive slogans about a bad Verkhovna Rada or a no-good president. The contradictions discernible in the corridors of power in fact from the first days of the Yushchenko government have just come out from under the carpet onto an almost open political stage.
NO MAJORITY
The parliamentary majority formed a year ago by being built from the top down was an artificial affair from the very beginning. To see this, it was sufficient to watch the unforgettable live televised dialogue between Yuliya Tymoshenko and Hryhory Surkis. The first round of confrontation was not immediately followed by another, because the former and current managers of the most lucrative financial flows felt too uncertain at the time. A six month period of warming up in the media, in which both sides resorted to mixing the truth with cheap demagogy and at times even outright lies, has also brought no tangible gains to anyone. Neither the people, nor the guarantor of the Constitution, nor the government was in any hurry to react to almost daily mutual recriminations or let things take their course. In truth, the common people did show a surge of activity in the April referendum, but to say seriously that it embraced the whole nation is like seriously believing that Mrs. Tymoshenko is an uncompromising troubleshooter on the energy market.
Meanwhile, the makeshift majority would make, in one way or another, the decisions the state needed, but only after a good dressing-down publicly referred to as consultations.
What was significant was the resignation of experienced politician Leonid Kravchuk as the majority coordinator. You will agree that the pretext over which he quit this post was too trivial to mention under certain circumstances. All we had to do was wait for the increasingly ephemeral majority to crumble. At last it has. Everything is now at its proper place. The people’s elect have come back to the positions that correspond to their interests. And, moreover, Mr. Kuchma can regard as friendly none of the parts of the disintegrated majority.
MELNYCHENKO
Meanwhile, Ukrainian politics have been living for two months from Melnychenko to Melnychenko, daily anticipating new revelations from the mysterious major. One has to be a complete idiot to believe that one isolated officer could record for years conversations in the President’s office (recording in the presidential study was done for 300 hours, the so very well informed Socialist leader Moroz revealed with stunning precision, Interfax-Ukraine reports). No doubt, the office was bugged by serious specialists who used not only a digital voice recorder under a sofa. It is they who, through Melnychenko, let out drop by drop the fished spy information, keeping in suspense almost all the official personages. The president refused to cut this process short, which he could do by making concessions to the opposition. We have already discussed the iron grip with which the owners of ministerial offices hold on to their posts. Should this continue, this country will be ashamed, listening to what is not intended for everybody to hear. Things have gone so far that Melnychenko is even being asked about sex life in the top office. What next?
WHICH WAY OUT?
Following Deputy Kravchuk, who dropped parliamentary majority coordination in time, no less experienced Speaker Pliushch also promised on Thursday to abandon the post of speaker if the majority disintegrates. The “oligarchic” factions are keeping a low profile, refraining from abrupt movement. Ms. Tymoshenko’s criminal case is in suspended animation. The implementation of referendum results has been finally and irreversibly buried; we will not see it until the next elections. Something is in the air, somebody must venture to take a resolute step and show initiative, above all, the president who, in spite of the cassette scandal, has a host of political opportunities to ride out the crisis. Yet, it could also turn out that nothing happens. The country could move slowly along all vectors, a politically weakened president complaining about all those in his way, the police and security ministers along with the prosecutor general show their indispensability to the state by urgently uncovering yet another conspiracy, parliament humming in preparation for fresh elections, and the government pretending to be carrying out reforms. We can call this either a crisis or merely the life we have lived for some years now.
