Doubling down

On December 1, Mykola Martynenko – according to media, “the main sponsor” of the People’s Front party and the sitting prime minister Arsenii Yatseniuk’s right-hand man – resigned from parliament in connection with a corruption scandal and information campaign associated with his name.

The news was first broken by Martynenko self during the live talk show Freedom of Speech on ICTV. The receipt of his resignation letter by the Verkhovna Rada was confirmed by Pavlo Pynzenyk, deputy head of the Committee on Rules of Parliamentary Procedure.

Svitlana Zalishchuk, MP from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc (BPP) immediately reacted on her Facebook page. She wrote she was convinced that the parliament would find 226 votes to sanction this attempt at “divorcing his MP seat.”

“Martynenko gave up his membership = MP Serhii Leshchenko’s investigation multiplied by diplomats’ undiplomatic queries + Biden’s scheduled visit  multiplied by the government’s negative approval rating in society multiplied by Yatseniuk’s attempt to get rid of the dead weight which threatened to sink the government,” writes Zalishchuk. “Similar equations used to come to zero. Not this time around. There are now values that change the political math. Not individually, but all together. And in my opinion, there will be the necessary 226 votes.”

As a reminder: on November 26, Leshchenko published on the website of Ukrainska Pravda, and later demonstratively, in front of cameras, handed over to Prime Minister Yatseniuk, the documents concerning criminal proceedings opened in Switzerland against Martynenko, member of his parliamentary faction, on charges of money laundering and taking a bribe. Zalishchuk’s colleague from the newly created “anti-corruption parliamentary group” MP Yehor FIRSOV likewise links Martynenko’s resignation letter with Yatseniuk’s prospective premiership. “Yatseniuk is getting rid of dead weight in order to save his political standing and post,” said Firsov in a comment to The Day.

ACCORDING TO THE DAY’S SOURCES, MP MYKOLA MARTYNENKO IS PREPARING A SUIT AGAINST SERHII LESHCHENKO / Photo by Oleksandr KOSARIEV

Both Zalishchuk and Firsov are right to a certain extent. The Day has already written about the prime minister’s (and the coalition’s) shaky foothold. But it should be noted that until now the Rada did not have a majority of votes for Yatseniuk’s resignation from his current office. Moreover, our readers will remember that Yatseniuk himself raised the question of his premiership before the president, saying that if the Rada should pass the vote of no confidence, the People’s Front would withdraw from the coalition, which would effectively mean a snap parliamentary election. And that is the last thing Ukraine’s key international partners are eager to see.

Taras Berezovets, a political scientist, considers Martynenko’s decision to resign as another message signalizing a complicated situation in the coalition. In his opinion, Martynenko’s resignation protects both the Yatseniuk government and the faction of the People’s Front.

However, Berezovets remarks that Martynenko’s political trick could cost him dear.

“Martynenko belongs to old school players. Giving up his immunity, he gets himself seriously exposed. You must be fairly convinced that everything will turn out safe when you take such a serious step,” says Berezovets.

However, despite the younger MPs optimism, their more experienced colleagues in parliament, who know Martynenko better, are certain that the things will not go as far as actual resignation. The story is most likely to unfold according to the following scenario: the letter of resignation will be directed to a parliamentary committee where the People’s Front has a majority. The party will not vote for the resignation, and Martynenko will remain in parliament. “This [Martynenko’s attempted resignation. – Ed.] is very much reminiscent of a similar situation, when Andrii Ivanchuk, another People’s Front MP (is it their special feature or something?), made known his decision to step down as head of the Committee on Economic Policy. And then their faction, the People’s Front (and it included almost 90 persons) did not vote for his resignation, so the motion did not garner enough votes. As a result, Ivanchuk is still heading the Committee. So far it looks as though Martynenko was playing the same game: a bombastic statement, and then they will not get enough votes. Appearances will be saved, just like his seat in parliament,” says Serhii Vlasenko, MP (Fatherland).

However, Mykola Kniazhytsky, member of the People’s Front parliamentary faction, said in a commentary to The Day that this time around the story would unfold differently.

“Martynenko said live on air that he would do everything to get his resignation through, didn’t he? How can the People’s Front not vote for? My forecast is that it will vote for it. If the faction decides in favor of it (and my sense is that it does), I too will vote for Martynenko’s resignation,” said Kniazhytsky.

Kniazhytsky’s words suggest that Martynenko has used this ploy in the current power struggle between the president’s and prime minister’s teams. “The resignation is a strong move on Martynenko’s part. The accusations in his address [on the part of Leshchenko. – Ed.] pertain to the period when the Yanukovych prosecution addressed Swiss law-enforcement authorities, which initiated proceedings on the fact, not against Martynenko personally. So the very fact of Martynenko’s resignation should show that a strong individual does not need parliamentary immunity,” said Kniazhytsky to The Day.

Yet the vote in the Rada will not be enough for Martynenko. According to The Day’s sources, the MP is preparing a suit against Leshchenko, the MP who published the results of journalist investigation into Martynenko’s alleged corruption schemes on the site of Ukrainska Pravda, and later handed these documents over to Prime Minister Yatseniuk publicly, in front of the entire parliament. “The lawyers who looked into this information said that Leshchenko’s ‘evidence’ does not hold water,” according to our source.

Martynenko himself has not yet given any comments on this possibility. He did not answer phone calls, so we had to send him an e-mail (and are waiting for response now).

We would like to note that such litigation would be nothing new for Martynenko. Early in 2005, Martynenko won a “one-cent case” against the now deceased Oleksandr Zinchenko for “ungrounded accusation of corruption.” Because of this conflict with Martynenko, Zinchenko even resigned from the post of state secretary to President Viktor Yushchenko.

Nevertheless, it is quite obvious that the story of Leshchenko, Martynenko, and Yatseniuk is only a fragment of that sort of interspecific struggle which is going on in high offices. And it will not be over until there appears a new system of relations in government, as well as between government and the country it claims to govern.