Hopes pinned on Baloha

For a long time both rank and file party members and the honorary president of Our Ukraine have insisted that the party needs a new leader. The motive behind this is that the party, which until recently enjoyed record-breaking popularity, is quickly losing influence. A conflict between the business wing of Our Ukraine and the so- called high-principled party members, as well as coalition confrontations, have all contributed to the drop in Our Ukraine’s ratings. The president, who has said many times that he is “above all processes,” has decided to join the game and bring order to “his” party.

On Friday night the Pushcha-Vodytsia sanatorium was the venue of an important top secret political meeting at which members of the pro-presidential Our Ukraine party elected the chairman of the party council. The event was unexpectedly attended by the honorary leader of Our Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko.

Initially, there were six candidates proposed for the position of council chairman: the current head of the political council, Roman Bezsmertny, former Prime Minister Yurii Yekhanurov, Yurii Pavlenko, Petro Poroshenko, Pavlo Zhebrivsky, and even 81-year-old Ihor Yukhnovsky. The council members said they had come prepared and would vote for the person recommended by local party bodies (the favorite was Bezsmertny). Poroshenko had withdrawn his candidacy earlier.

Later, however, the viewpoints of ordinary party members and President Yushchenko diverged. The latter arrived at the meeting together with Viktor Baloha, head of the Presidential Secretariat, and proposed the “outsider,” Baloha, for the demanding party position — temporarily, until next spring.

The party members and Baloha himself (as he put it) were surprised by the president’s decision. Members of the Orange bloc had their doubts that Baloha could combine his party position and his service in the Secretariat. Still, after three tries he was elected.

After his election the “hero of the day” declared that his main task is to organize the party congress to be held in February 2007, when a “permanent” leader will appear. But as they say, there is nothing more permanent than something that is temporary.

Our Ukraine’s honorary president said that “the party is going through an organizational period” and offered to hold local forums in the regions as a way to assess the work of Our Ukraine: “We need to study the party’s condition from the bottom to the top. The congress slated for February will provide answers to all questions and start a new phase in the party’s life.”

As for Bezsmertny, he will now head the party’s executive committee, a position once occupied by Mykola Katerynchuk.

One gets the impression that with his sudden visit to the Our Ukraine congress President Yushchenko tried to prevent Bezsmertny from regaining the chairmanship of the party council. So, judging from all the facts, the honorary leader of Our Ukraine is distancing himself from the alleged party sponsors, called “dear friends” in public. It seems that following Baloha, Arsen Yatseniuk and Viktor Bondar, the ex-minister of transport and communication, will get key positions in the Orange party. The new leaders’ prime assignment will probably be to rehabilitate Our Ukraine in the public eye. Whether or not they will cope with this impracticable task is a different question.

COMMENTS

Dmytro VYDRIN, political analyst, MP, BYuT faction:

“This will be a formal funeral with a salute, trooping of the colors, and things like that. I can’t remember any political project that could be revived with the aid of administrative resources. There have been a great many projects. There was the the People’s Democratic Party project, headed by Prime Minister Pustovoitenko, which was successfully buried when he resigned. There was the project Za Yedu, headed by the chairman of the Presidential Administration. This one was also successfully buried. There was Shcherban, head of an oblast state administration, who chaired the Liberal Party and buried it, too. There have been no exceptions to the rule.

“As soon as a person with a leading position and a huge administrative resource heads a political force, the latter starts to go downhill, and in a few years it turns into a political force with zero potential. This is obviously not a revival or strengthening of the party, but rather the beginning of the end.

“Another thing: in Ukraine the main resource of a party is not money or administrative resources — it is the degree of its leader’s charisma. All Ukrainian parties are in fact the “fuehrer” type. Their chief potential is the leader’s persona. Baloha is by definition no leader, he is not charismatic. He is also of no use to this party in the administrative aspect because this administrative resource is counterproductive: the more you invest in it, the worse it is for the political force. Taking into account all these arguments, we can soon kiss this political force goodbye.”

Volodymyr MALYNKOVYCH, political analyst, director of the Ukrainian department of the International Institute for Humanitarian and Political Research:

“I think all this attests to the fact that the Presidential Secretariat is trying to use the president. The Secretariat seems to be imposing on Yushchenko its vision of how to rule the country. In their opinion, the president needs a political force standing behind him. There is no other political force besides Our Ukraine. Since Our Ukraine is a collapsing, uncontrolled structure, the people in the Secretariat used Yushchenko to impose themselves on the party in order to create some kind of a structure that works clearly in Yushchenko’s favor. I think no good will come of this. This is a lost cause. As a matter of fact, the appointment of a person who is unpopular within the party as the head of council will only increase centrifugal tendencies inside the party. On the other hand, the Secretariat is losing the role it is supposed to play in a democratic state. This is the Presidential Secretariat. It is a secretariat of the head of state, not of a party leader. Therefore, the Secretariat must be independent of all parties.”

Volodymyr ZASTAVA, Horshenin Institute for the Study of Government Administration Problems, Kyiv:

“A few weeks ago we predicted that Our Ukraine is gradually turning into a Ukrainian prototype of the ruling Russian party, United Russia. The appointment of Baloha as the formal party leader confirms our assumption. In other words, Our Ukraine faces the prospect of a gradual “shrinkage” to the governing party. It will turn into a kind of nomenclatural structure without any special ideological leaders.

“As for the business wing of the party, the so-called “dear friends,” it is more profitable for them because through Baloha’s ties to the Presidential Secretariat they can try to lobby some of their interests, which is no longer possible through the Our Ukraine faction in the Verkhovna Rada.”

Lilia HRYHOROVYCH, MP, Our Ukraine faction:

ForUm quotes MP Lilia Hryhorovych, member of Our Ukraine, as saying that when the head of the Presidential Secretariat, Baloha, was elected chairman of the party council of the Our Ukraine People’s Union, the voting was democratic.

Hryhorovych said that all oblast party organizations had discussed candidates for this post and expressed the opinion that the head of the council should be named by Yushchenko, the honorary party president. “The honorary leader named his candidate. As other people laid claims to the party council chairmanship, they got up and withdrew from the electoral race,” Hryhorovych said, adding that this was done by Pavlenko, Yukhnovsky, Oliinyk, and Poroshenko, after which Baloha was elected.

In answer to the question about what will change with Baloha’s appointment as the honorary head of Our Ukraine, Hryhorovych pointed out that after the appointment of “this or that person there will be no horn of plenty.” She said that at a party council Our Ukraine party members had agreed “in three months to hold a congress whose purpose is to unite the national democratic forces that are inside and outside parliament...Our goal is to elect by a direct vote the chairman of the party council in three months. I believe we will cope with this task,” she summed up.

Taras CHORNOVIL, MP, Party of Regions:

The election of Baloha, the head of the Presidential Secretariat, as chairman of the party council of the Our Ukraine People’s Union is proof of the strengthening of Yushchenko’s patronage over this political force. Chornovil believes that Baloha’s leadership will last much longer than three months. According to him, a serious problem for Yushchenko has been the fact that Our Ukraine and the identically named bloc have been “practically uncontrolled, which led to chaotic processes.” Chornovil assumes that “through Baloha, a very pragmatic and tough politician, Yushchenko will be able to bring the party to order and back to present-day reality.” The MP argues that this cadre decision in Our Ukraine may be a positive factor for the whole political sphere, including the Party of Regions, because in the event that the party “makes politically inadequate statements, it will be possible to put questions about this not to some ephemeral party called Our Ukraine, where no one knows who’s leading or whom to talk to, but personally to President Yushchenko,” www.pravda.com.ua reports.

Yurii KLIUCHKOVSKY, MP, Our Ukraine faction:

The decision on Baloha’s election as chairman of the party council of the Our Ukraine People’s Union will not lead to a rift. “I can’t see any grounds for talking about a rift,” he said, noting that he does not exclude the possibility that “someone may leave the party... But I hope there will be few such people,” he stressed, adding that instead of this, new members may join the party. As an example, he mentioned Tretiakov’s reaction to Baloha’s election, recalling that the former did not accept the decision but did not leave the party either. Kliuchkovsky expressed the hope that the party council’s decision on Baloha’s election “will be taken normally” by regional party organizations, ForUm reports.

Kliuchkovsky pointed out that the party statute does not allow the head of the party council to be elected at a congress by a direct vote. That is why President Yushchenko suggested that in three months a congress should be held to amend the party statute and elect the council chairman. Asked whether Baloha’s election will consolidate the party or lead to “its end,” Kliuchkovsky quoted the words of Mark Twain: “Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”