Turning the pages back... November 19, 2000 (11/18/01)

Turning the pages back...

November 19, 2000

It was one year ago in our November 19 issue that our Kyiv Press Bureau reported that politicians of varying political leanings had stepped forward to support the work of the government of Viktor Yuschenko after the prime minister implied the previous week that he was tired of the persistent criticism and pressure from political opponents.

On November 13, 2000, an ideologically diverse political coalition of lawmakers, including Borys Oliinyk of the Communist Party, Stepan Khmara of the Conservative Republican Party and Mykhailo Syrota, a centrist who is considered the father of the Constitution, called a press conference to express their satisfaction with the work of the Yuschenko government to date. The next day, leading members of the Reform and Order Party, led by Chairman Viktor Pynzenyk, presented economic figures that supported the government's claim of a substantive economic upsurge.

Pointing to the spectacular rise in economic indicators including a 5 percent growth in the GDP and an 11.7 percent increase in industrial output for 2000, as well as the retirement of large pension and wage arrears, the $2.3 billion decrease in foreign debt and cessation of electrical blackouts in towns and villages, Mr. Syrota said, "We would think that such accomplishments would be worthy of general praise, but the government has only come under systemic attack."

Mr. Pynzenyk and his fellow party members came out in unqualified support of the government's program, underlining that specific members of the ruling business elite, who wield much power in the Verkhovna Rada and with President Leonid Kuchma, were pressuring the Yuschenko government to either resign or cater to its desires.

Mr. Yuschenko's Cabinet of Ministers had come under criticism of one kind or another almost from the first day of his appointment by President Kuchma in December 1999, for everything from the way it proceeded on administrative reform to repeated accusations that it inflated figures that point to the beginning of an economic resurgence. Mr. Yuschenko and his vice prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, were disparaged for the regulations they introduced in reforming the energy sector, especially by the business and political oligarchs who wanted to maintain their singular influence over the market.

Ultimately, on April 26 of this year, an unlikely political coalition of business oligarchs and Communists succeeded in removing Prime Minister Yuschenko, just over 16 months after the popular, reform-minded former banker took the helm of the government and made the first sustained attempts at economic reform in the country's nearly 10-year history. Three pro-business political factions in the Verkhovna Rada joined the Communist Party faction to oust Ukraine's second-longest serving prime minister by a vote of 263-69, with 77 national deputies either not voting or abstaining.

Sources: "Politicians of various stripes voice support for Yuschenko" by Roman Woronowycz, Kyiv Press Bureau, The Ukrainian Weekly, November 19, 2000, Vol. LXVIII, No. 47; and "Verkhovna Rada votes to oust Yuschenko" by Roman Woronowycz, Kyiv Press Bureau, The Ukrainian Weekly, April 29, 2001, Vol. LXIX, No. 17.

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