What did we fight for?

It is incredible but true: the much-publicized announcement that the president of Ukraine is considering a strong-arm scenario of resolving the political crisis, which was not issued by a mouthy MP but Prime Minister Yulia Ty­moshenko herself, has left Ukrai­nians unperturbed. Life is proceeding normally in Kyiv: the streets are full of bustling crowds and cars from dawn to dusk, traffic policemen, whose department is constantly being disbanded and revived, continue to deal with traffic infractions, and express minibuses rush by, jam-packed with Kyivites who are always pressed for time.

In other words, the parliamentary crisis has done nothing to change the daily routine of ordinary people. Our leaders often toss out high-sounding phrases that would have stirred up public passions in any other European country. The result is quite predictable: the Ukrainian people are coolly indifferent to the governmental hysteria. They are fed up with intrigues, idle chatter, and all the infighting. But it may be too early to say that the hostilities are over. On the contrary, everything is just begin­ning.

Meanwhile, the latest dispatch from the governmental “battlefields” suggests that neither side has analyzed the source of the crisis, let alone learned lessons from it.

Instead, the Presidential Secretariat, the Cabinet of Ministers, and parliament are all busy looking for an information weapon capable of eliminating their erstwhile partners and current opponents. Standing out against this background is the dispassionate Party of Regions, which has made it clear, via Taras Chornovil, that it will patiently wait for the Orange parties to divorce and only then choose with whom it will enter into a marriage of convenience – the BYuT or the NU-NS.

The Presidential Secretariat (PS), whose “good” intentions in fact destroyed the fragile coalition consisting of the pro-presidential and the pro-prime-ministerial factions, is now concerned not about finding ways to defuse the crisis but about digging up additional sins committed by Tymoshenko.

The PS is threatening to take the prime minister to court unless she “stops telling lies.” Deputy chief Maryna Stavniichuk has vehemently denied Tymoshenko’s accusation that she, as the president’s representative, spoke against the democratic coalition when the Constitutional Court was going to rule whether the parliamentary majority was invalid. Stavniichuk insists that President Yushchenko is in fact making an all-out effort to let the democratic parliamentary coalition live on and prosper.

The head of the Presidential Secretariat, Viktor Baloha, has also called Tymoshenko a person who “sows untruths left and right.” Baloha chose a traditional – epistolary – genre of communicating with the prime minister.

“Prime Minister Yulia Ty­mo­shenko’s latest public appearance showed society her customary propensity for passing off blatant lies, generously seasoned with distortions and fact-twisting, as the truth. Tymoshenko is resorting to an old propaganda ploy that was widely used in the last century by the leaders and ideologues of fascist regimes: repeating lies, inventions, and untruths ad infinitum. Clearly, either the prime minister is playing a record that is skipping or there is a glitch in her soundtrack,” Baloha concludes emotionally.

Tymoshenko chose to ignore these gibes altogether, while the president even said at the Ukraine-EU summit that even the most experienced combat engineers would not be able to spot a crisis on the Pechersk Hills, meaning that everything that is going on is a sign of democracy.

“There is no crisis. This is a normal situation for democracy,” the guarantor of the Ukrainian Constitution noted, among other things. Although Tymoshenko did not attend the summit, she was accused of conspiring with European leaders. So, political adultery with Russia seems to be just the tip of the iceberg of the Ukrainian premier’s treacheries, so the people on Bankova Street say, of course.

According to Stepan Havrysh, First Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Tymoshenko is now trying to persuade the European Union to accept the creation of a BYuT-Party of Regions coalition in parliament and the passage of laws that will considerably reduce the constitutional powers of Ukraine’s president. To sound more convincing, Havrysh says Lady Yu is negotiating with Javier Solana, Secretary General of the EU Council, and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France.

If a BYuT-PR coalition is legally formed under the parliament’s glazed dome, Ukrainians will be seeing “a lot of interesting things,” Speaker Arsenii Yatseniuk says.

Political scientists are also trying to forecast the political weather. Vasyl Stoiakin, director of the Political Marketing Center, points out four possible ways out of the political crisis.

The first option is to restore the status quo, whereby all Verkhovna Rada resolutions, from Sept. 2 onwards, will be canceled. “This scenario is possible, but it will in fact mean a transition to what I call the Hetmanate, where there is a constitutional norm, a constitutional system for the country, a government, and a parliament, but in reality neither the government nor the parliament can decide anything, and everything is decided at the presidential level, but the president is not responsible for anything. In fact, this is very close to overt dictatorship,” the political scientist noted.

The second way out of the crisis lies in the introduction of direct presidential rule. Stoiakin cannot imagine how to do this in the current situation because the Presidential Secretariat has successfully wrecked the executive power’s vertical structure.

In the political scientist’s opinion, the third scenario – early elections – is fraught with too many risks. It would be the third parliamentary election in three years, which “is not good. There will be a poor turnout, and you can well imagine the level of rigging that will go on when voters show no interest in these elections.” Stoiakin is convinced that new elections will also adversely affect Ukraine’s international image.

A fourth scenario is the formation of an interim (stop-gap) parliamentary majority.

On Sept. 10 all the leading news agencies were firing off re­ports that the pro-presidential Our Uk­raine had launched an early parliamentary election campaign both in the center region of Uk­rai­ne and in the provinces. Only time will tell what results the election display board will finally flash out.

The starting positions of the key players can be clearly seen even now. Yanukovych will be playing the role of peacemaker against the backdrop of the perpetually squabbling prime minister and president. Tymoshenko will play the role of poor little Yulia whom the Bankova Street “monsters” are not allowing to carry out the much-hyped breakthrough, Ukrainian style.

As for Yushchenko, the crucial question is not whom he will play but with whom. The NU-NS faction is breaking up as fast as the wind blows. Out of last year’s top five members on the Orange bloc’s list, only Viacheslav Kyrylenko is still siding with Yushchenko. The others have their eyes on the BYuT leader. The president is reshuffling his staff so carelessly that with every passing day he is losing more and more of his once loyal comrades-in-arms.

Indeed, which self-respecting politician could possibly accept the president’s scandalous dictum, “I found you all at a garbage dump, and before that you were all nobodies”? So the only support for the guarantor of the Constitution in the likely early parliamentary elec­tions is the notorious administrative resource, which Baloha has reportedly already brought into play. But we went through all this in 2004, and President Yushchenko, of all people, should remember this very well and be able to foresee the likely consequences.