ANALYSIS: Is new pro-Yushchenko party more than a party of power? (03/27/05)

ANALYSIS

Is new pro-Yushchenko party more than a party of power?

by Jan Maksymiuk
RFE/RL Newsline

More than 6,000 delegates gathered in Kyiv on March 5 to set up a party called Our Ukraine People's Union (OUPU), which is to provide political support to the government of President Viktor Yushchenko and vie for a substantial parliamentary representation in the 2006 general elections.

The congress elected 120 delegates to the party's council, and chose Vice Prime Minister Roman Bezsmertnyi as head of the council and lawmaker Yurii Yekhanurov as head of the party's executive committee. Mr. Yushchenko, who reportedly signed up for the new party as an ordinary member and received membership card No. 1, was made the party's honorary chairman.

Some Ukrainian commentators jokingly described the Our Ukraine People's Union as the country's first "party of power" that is simultaneously a "people's party," which is true to a large extent if one takes into account the party's current membership. The delegates to the constituent congress, who automatically became full-fledged OUPU members, comprised both current government officials from Kyiv and rank-and-file activists of the 2004 Mr. Yushchenko presidential campaign from the provinces.

However, some circumstances under which the OUPU came into being and some developments during the congress have left many wondering whether the pro-Yushchenko party is not primarily poised to put the interests of the government before those of the people.

It was widely expected that President Yushchenko would build a new political force based on parties participating in his Our Ukraine parliamentary bloc. This, however, did not happen. The OUPU constituent congress was organized by the public movement For Ukraine! For Yushchenko! coordinated by the president's older brother, Petro Yushchenko, as well as by some government officials from Kyiv and regional governors. President Yushchenko had apparently failed to mobilize his major allies from the Orange Revolution - notably Yurii Kostenko's Ukrainian National Party and Borys Tarasyuk's National Rukh of Ukraine - in support of the idea of a single party.

It is also not known for the time being whether the Our Ukraine Party (formerly the Reforms and Order Party) led by current Finance Minister Viktor Pynzenyk will join the OUPU. Mr. Pynzenyk reregistered his party last year under the new name, which is commonly associated with Mr. Yushchenko and the Orange Revolution, in the apparent anticipation of the emergence of a united pro-Yushchenko force after the 2004 presidential election. Mr. Pynzenyk most likely expected that his renamed party would serve as a basis for such a consolidation. However, he was not given any role in forming the OUPU, and Mr. Yushchenko did not even mention Mr. Pynzenyk's Our Ukraine Party in his address to the March 5 congress.

What President Yushchenko did mention was an expected election coalition of the OUPU with the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc and the Agrarian Party of Ukraine led by Verkhovna Rada Chairman Volodymyr Lytvyn. "Today and many times [earlier] I told Yulia Volodymyrivna Tymoshenko - we see you in 2006 in one team with us," the Ukrainska Pravda website quoted Mr. Yushchenko as saying. "Volodymyr Mykhailovych Lytvyn! We see [us] in 2006 in one team [consisting of] the Our Ukraine People's Union, the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, and the Agrarian Party of Ukraine."

As regards the hitherto allied parties that evolved from Vyacheslav Chornovil's Rukh - Mr. Kostenko's Ukrainian National Party and Mr. Tarasyuk's National Rukh of Ukraine - President Yushchenko did not leave any doubt that they may either be absorbed by the OUPU or go their own way. "I have been saddened by the [intention] of our two partners, the Ukrainian National Party and the National Rukh of Ukraine, to go for the 2006 election on their own," Mr. Yushchenko said. "This is a mistake, but these people had the right to adopt the resolution they adopted. ... Our doors will remain open." However, he immediately qualified his "open-door policy" by reiterating his vision of a pro-presidential political alliance in 2006: "There will be a single coalition of the three forces [OUPU, Mr. Lytvyn's party and Ms. Tymoshenko's bloc]. This is our credo on which we stand."

The election of the OUPU's leading bodies, the council and the executive committee, reportedly took place by an undemocratic procedure - delegates to the congress were provided with a list of 120 members for the OUPU Council, which was prepared in advance by unknown people, and approved the list in one single vote, without discussing individual candidates. Delegates from the Donetsk Oblast tried to protest the candidates proposed to the OUPU Council from their region but were reportedly outwitted by those who presided over the congress - the Donetsk delegates were promised a repeat vote during a later stage of the congress but this never happened.

The OUPU's "Political Bureau" - the 21-member Presidium of the OUPU Council - includes such persons as Vice Prime Minister Roman Bezsmertnyi, Youth and Sports Minister Yurii Pavlenko, Justice Minister Roman Zvarych, Emergency Minister Davyd Zhvania, Culture Minister Oksana Bilozir, top presidential aide Oleksander Tretiakov, National Security and Defense Council Secretary Petro Poroshenko, Kyiv Mayor Oleksandr Omelchenko, and a group of pro-Yushchenko lawmakers.

In short, the OUPU looks very much like a party of Ukraine's newly established nomenklatura or like the National Democratic Party founded as a "party of power" in 1996 for the Kuchma era. Today, the National Democratic Party, which still has a dozen deputies in the Verkhovna Rada, seems to be nearing an unavoidable political demise in the 2006 election, when only parties winning no less than 3 percent of the vote nationally are to be rewarded with parliamentary seats.

The pro-Yushchenko OUPU, as a party based on time-serving political interests rather than on a consistent ideology and program, may well repeat the fate of the pro-Kuchma National Democratic Party, though this is unlikely to happen in 2006. It seems that President Yushchenko can be sure of a considerable gain of parliamentary seats, perhaps even a majority, in 2006 for his supporters in the planned coalition with Ms. Tymoshenko and Mr. Lytvyn. What happens after that is anybody's guess. But the fact that President Yushchenko is following Leonid Kuchma's footsteps in building a political base for his presidency is already troubling, to say the least.

Jan Maksymiuk is the Belarus and Ukraine specialist on the staff of RFE/RL Newsline.

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