ANALYSIS: Yushchenko finally acts to clean up his government (09/18/05)

ANALYSIS

Yushchenko finally acts to clean up his government

by Taras Kuzio
Eurasia Daily Monitor

On September 8 President Viktor Yushchenko fired his government and removed top officials accused of corruption. Oleksander Zinchenko, the former head of the Presidential Secretariat, had leveled the startling corruption charges four days earlier, after resigning on September 2 (see Eurasia Daily Monitor, September 8).

The crisis that engulfed Mr. Yushchenko's team after Mr. Zinchenko's accusations was no ordinary political crisis. Indeed, Socialist Party leader Oleksander Moroz described it as a "crisis of the system" (Ukrayinska Pravda, September 8).

Suddenly Ukraine's Orange Revolution received its first negative headlines from the international media. The Daily Telegraph's September 7 headline was typical: "Ukraine's Orange Revolution loses its luster."

Worse still, Ukraine's leaders failed to quietly forewarn the United States, the European Union and Russia of President Yushchenko's imminent housecleaning. Not surprisingly, many observers remained concerned about possible "destabilization" while scrambling to find out more than what they had read on the morning wires.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin appeared overjoyed at the crisis (The Guardian, September 6). He repeated Mr. Zinchenko's accusations of corruption, gloating, "We said this before and no one wanted to listen to us."

Ultimately, the main fallout was in the domestic arena, as the crisis called into question President Yushchenko's personal leadership style. Few wanted to say publicly what everybody was saying privately; namely, does Mr. Yushchenko have the political will to enforce his presidential decisions?

Since his inauguration in January, Mr. Yushchenko has often preferred traveling on the international stage than actually running the country. Although constitutional reforms transferring some power from the executive to the Parliament and government are not set to take place until January 2006, Mr. Yushchenko was already acting as a symbolic president.

In the last eight months, Mr. Yushchenko has only intervened when the domestic situation reached a crisis point. He failed to halt the notorious public squabbling between Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and National Security and Defense Council Secretary Petro Poroshenko.

He finally intervened in May, warning Ms. Tymoshenko about her statist economic policies (see EDM, May 11 and 27), and in June-July, when it looked as though Parliament might not adopt the legislation necessary for joining the WTO (EDM, June 15). In September Mr. Yushchenko warned Ms. Tymoshenko about supporting one oligarch group (Pryvat) over another (Interpipe) in a re-privatization dispute.

When Mr. Zinchenko aired the coalition's dirty laundry ahead of Mr. Yushchenko's scheduled visit to the United States this week, the president had to respond. A failure to act decisively might have spelled the end of the Yushchenko presidency. The opposition would capitalize on public anxieties and the image of a lame duck president ahead of the March 2006 elections.

Social Democratic Party - United parliamentary faction leader Leonid Kravchuk warned President Yushchenko that he could face early elections if the political crisis continued. The former president obviously spoke from experience, having been forced to call early elections in 1994.

A growing number of Ukrainians had already begun to question whether Mr. Yushchenko was all that different from his predecessor, Leonid Kuchma. A Razumkov Center poll found that the number of Ukrainians who believed that President Yushchenko was better than Mr. Kuchma had declined from 52 percent in April to 37 percent in August) (Dzerkalo Tyzhnia/Zerkalo Nedeli, August 27-September 2).

Worse still, in August the number of Ukrainians who believed that Ukraine was moving in the "wrong direction" (43 percent) for the first time was higher than those who thought Ukraine was moving in the right direction (32 percent). In February 51 percent of Ukrainians believed Ukraine was moving in the "right direction" compared to only 24 percent who disagreed. Trust in Mr. Yushchenko and Ms. Tymoshenko had declined during the same period by 16 to 17 percent (Dzerkalo Tyzhnia/Zerkalo Nedeli, August 27-September 2).

Verkhovna Rada Chairman Volodymyr Lytvyn said that, although the new leaders claimed to be doing everything in a different way, "it increasingly resembled how it was done under Mr. Kuchma" (Ukrayinska Pravda, September 6). He certainly would know, as he was head of the presidential administration in 1996-2002.

Mr. Yushchenko was also damaged by accusations recently made by Lesia Gongadze, mother of murdered opposition journalist Heorhii Gongadze. Although killed in fall 2000, he has yet to be buried. Mrs. Gongadze lost a court case in which she had complained about the inactivity of the prosecutor's office regarding her son's case. Afterwards, she said, "So what? Mr. Yushchenko or Mr. Kuchma - nothing has changed. I will not go to Mr. Yushchenko and give him my hand, as we have nothing in common" (Ukrayinska Pravda, September 7).

There have long been whispers that the official investigation into who ordered the Gongadze murder has been blocked at high levels (see EDM, July 20). First Vice Prime Minister Mykola Tomenko said that the people Mr. Zinchenko had accused of corruption were the same people who were blocking the Gongadze investigation (Ukrayinska Pravda, September 8). Mr. Tomenko also claimed that Mr. Lytvyn had blocked parliamentary discussion of the report by the parliamentary investigation commission.

By acting decisively to remove officials accused of corruption, Mr. Yushchenko has shown that his presidency differs from that of Mr. Kuchma, who condoned corruption in exchange for political loyalty.

Mr. Zinchenko has already taken evidence to the Procurator General's Office related to Mr. Poroshenko's allegedly corrupt activities. Accusations against him may be personally difficult for Mr. Yushchenko, as Mr. Poroshenko is the godfather of one of Mr. Yushchenko's five children.

President Yushchenko's decisive actions have resolved the crisis for now. But there remains much to be done and his allies are deserting him. Mr. Yushchenko's Our Ukraine parliamentary faction has progressively disintegrated throughout this week. The People's Union Our Ukraine now has only 45 deputies, down from 100 at the beginning of 2005. Mr. Yushchenko's faction now has only one more deputy than Mr. Lytvyn's People's Party (44) and only four more than Ms. Tymoshenko's (41).

After Mr. Zinchenko's accusations, the Our Ukraine faction splintered into a People's Union Our Ukraine bloc (45), using the name of Mr. Yushchenko's stalled new party of power, and Rukh factions (14). Two further factions soon appeared - Reforms and Order (15) and Forward Ukraine (19). The Ukrainian People's Party (22) had withdrawn earlier from Our Ukraine.

Given the apparent crisis, perhaps President Yushchenko should not be traveling abroad at this time.

Dr. Taras Kuzio is visiting professor at the Elliot School of International Affairs, George Washington University. The article above, which originally appeared in The Jamestown Foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor, is reprinted here with permission from the foundation (www.jamestown.org).

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