Foreign policy opportunities and domestic prospects on the line

In an urgent televised address to the Ukrainian nation President Viktor Yushchenko said that a new coalition has been de facto created in parliament.

Commenting on the crisis, the head of state said that he is ready to exercise his constitutional right and terminate the mandate of the Verkhovna Rada of the 6th convocation early if a coalition is not formed in a different format within the 30-day period prescribed by the law.

“It is my great desire that each one of us understand that what happened on Tuesday was not just another event and not a simple technical vote. This is the moment of truth for us — for each one of you and for our country in general. A new coalition has been de facto formed in the Verkhovna Rada. The BYuT has united with the Party of Regions and the communists. State interests are not the foundation of this union. The democratic maj­ority was bet­ray­ed by this union,” said the president.

“The move to break up the coalition was planned. The BYuT rejected all efforts on the part of the NU-NS to gather together the coalition’s council and work out a joint position on current issues,” Yushchenko continued, calling the joint vote by the Party of Regions and the BYuT nothing more than a political and constitutional coup. “The BYuT, the Party of Regions, and the CPU restored the anti-constitutional law on the government, which sparked the early election in 2006. This law establishes the dictatorship of the prime minister,” Yush­chenko summed up emotionally.

Prime Minister Yulia Ty­mo­shenko also voiced her views on the recent developments in parliament. She is convinced that the responsibility for the demise of the democratic coalition rests with the president. She made this statement after the government ministers representing the NU-NS defiantly left a meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers.

“The president’s conduct is irresponsible, and it was on his command that the coalition was destroyed,” Tymoshenko said. At the same time, she expressed the hope that the political forces that are interested in preserving the coalition will manage to find a way out of the crisis. In conclusion she emphasized that the coalition formed by the BYuT and the NU-NS should continue to exist.

Let’s be frank: the current events in Ukrainian political circles were predicted as far back as 2004, after Yushchenko won the presidential elections.

The infamous constitutional bargaining, which led to the reduction of the president’s powers and an imbalance in the division of power in the state, was a significant factor in this crisis. In his first year as president, Yushchenko still had good leverage and was correctly marking out the outlines, but he failed to find worthy “painters” who would be able to continue filling out the picture to the final stroke. In other words, having established the correct strategic objectives for Ukraine, the president was unable or unwilling to seek help from professionals. Even today he has apparently not grasped the seemingly trite axiom that allies are to be won, not lost.

Yushchenko keeps losing allies. Out of the top five candidate MPs in the pro-presidential bloc last year only Arsenii Yatseniuk, the parliamentary speaker, is still playing on the president’s side. Yushchenko’s other bulwark is Viktor Baloha, the head of the Presidential Secretariat, who has carried his part too far without giving a thought to what consequences his play will mean for Ukraine. Perfectly aware of the fact that the Secretariat’s everyday invectives against the government and the prime minister will sooner or later cause symmetrical retaliation, Baloha and his assistants continue to annoy the geese. But the geese that once saved Rome can today spoil Ukraine’s domestic and foreign strategic prospects.

What is happening now is not a scenario where one can simply say: “The coalition is dead. Long live the coalition!” The disintegration of the coalition may lead to strategic consequences and automatically block Kyiv’s prospect of getting the MAP, among other things. Does the civilized NATO club need a “savage” country where key politicians, de jure partners, fight each other tooth and nail?

It is worthwhile reflecting in detail on the conduct of Ty­mo­shenko’s parliamentary faction. A barrage of accusations fired off by the Presidential Secretariat seems to have found its mark and led the prime minister to retaliate against Baloha and others of his ilk through her MPs. Tymoshenko’s emotions out­weighed a state-oriented approach — that was a display of weakness rather than strength.

It is important to note that the second concerted vote by the BYuT and the Party of Regions in favor of stripping the president of some of his powers took place against the background of the well-known events connected to the question of Ukrainian borders. Hence, by curtailing Yush­chenko’s mandate as the Supreme Commander in Chief, the Ty­moshenko-Yanukovych tandem is limiting the country’s potential. Is this approach concordant with Ukraine’s national interests? Far from it. Then why are politicians who are going to be campaigning for president in a year’s time indulging in these kinds of games, which are merely weakening our country’s position?

In the tragic and dramatic circumstances that Georgia faced recently, the Georgian opposition, the government, and even exiled Georgian politicians immediately closed ranks and unanimously called for the preservation of the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. On the one hand, yes, Saakashvili made a big mistake by resorting to arms. On the other hand, we should not forget that he was asserting his country’s territorial integrity. To all appearances Ukrainian politicians are unlikely to be united by anything, even by the risk of losing European and other prospects that until yesterday seemed almost real.

A devastating blow to Ukraine’s positions, including its foreign policy prospects, was struck by the representatives of all party camps, and personally by Yushchenko and Tymoshenko. The former has played the “bad prime minister” game for far too long, spending nearly all his working time on producing (together with Baloha) epistolary strictures aimed at the head of the government. Tymoshenko broke her fresh promise to do everything possible to preserve the fragile coalition majority and, wanting to give the Secretariat a taste of its own medicine, drove the last nail into the coalition’s coffin.

The Party of Regions has hardly benefited from this situational cooperation with the BYuT and, in general, from its stand on the Caucasus issue because comparing the party with Hezbollah, which is the only entity, apart from Russia, that has acknowledged the two rebel Georgian regions as independent states, does nothing to prettify the image of the largest, 175-strong, Uk­rainian parliamentary faction.

Only one Regional, Taras Chornovil, publicly voiced his disagreement with the party’s leader, Yanukovych, who demanded that Ukraine acknowledge the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. On Sept. 2, 2008, in an interview with The Day, Chornovil claimed that he was ready to submit a letter announcing his departure from the faction and would not accept the party-approved position on the Russian-Georgian conflict.

There are no winners in this game because each player’s performance included flagrant violations of the rules. Sadly, Ukraine and its chances, prospects, and immediate future are on the losing side. Politicians will now organize roundtables, sign more manifestoes — in short, they will look for a way out of the pit that they have dug together. Mean­while, everything could be different: with a marked shift in Germany and France’s attitude, our country could have stood a chance of getting the MAP in December. This is merely one of a multitude of chances, which are now a thing of the past.

COMMENTARY

Viktor NEBOZHENKO, political scientist and head of the Ukrainsky Barometr Sociological Service:

“Nine months of absolutely impotent efforts on the part of the Presidential Secretariat turned out to be one of the causes behind what happened in parliament. These events resemble a well-planned special operation: the division of the president’s powers between two leading political forces-the Party of Regions and the Yulia Ty­mo­shenko Bloc. The objective of both is to remove Yushchenko from Ukraine’s po­li­tical arena. They believe that his electorate will not be lost but will vote for the Party of Regions or the BYuT. However, in both parties there are people who are against the Yanukovych-Ty­mo­shenko friendship. Even journalists did not have any information about the negotiations that were taking place between these two political teams. In all likelihood, just one day before the vote in the Verkhovna Rada, MPs were given an order to vote according to a certain system. Baloha’s claim about Moscow influencing the political situation in Ukraine came late-this should have been done earlier. Of course, there is a mastermind and certain financial decisions behind the recent events in parliament, but we will learn about this only a few months from now.”

Serhii DATSIUK, expert:

“Looking at the fate of the coalition, parliament, the president, and the government, we are talking about the same issues over and over again. The main problem in Ukraine is that it lacks an efficient political system. First, there are two centers of executive power. The confrontation bet­ween the president and the prime minister has become systematic. Second, the coalition is ineffective. Therefore, none of the systemic problems in the country can be resolved through early elections, impeaching the president, forming a new coalition, etc. This requires changing the country’s political system. If our politicians are incapable of accomplishing this in the near future, we will need to take the path of political lustration. This would involve removing politicians from power without the right to hold any political offices for 10 years. Then we would need to modify the Constitution of Ukraine, the laws, government agencies, etc. This would be the only solution to the current situation.”