ANALYSIS: Has Yushchenko betrayed the Orange Revolution? (10/09/05)

ANALYSIS

Has Yushchenko betrayed the Orange Revolution?

by Jan Maksymiuk
RFE/RL Newsline

On September 27-28 Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko appointed some 20 ministers to the new Cabinet of Prime Minister Yurii Yekhanurov. The appointments apparently marked Mr. Yushchenko's recovery of control over a government that found itself in a serious political crisis, triggered by public allegations of corruption in the presidential entourage and the sacking of the previous Cabinet of Yulia Tymoshenko.

However, many in Ukraine and abroad wonder if President Yushchenko has not paid an excessive price for getting the new Cabinet down to work so quickly.

Mr. Yushchenko suffered an unpleasant setback in the Verkhovna Rada on September 20, when Mr. Yekhanurov fell three votes short of being approved as prime minister. Therefore, to secure himself against such nasty surprises in the future, Mr. Yushchenko made a political deal with his main rival in the 2004 presidential election, former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. After that, Mr. Yanukovych's Party of the Regions parliamentary caucus, consisting of 50 deputies, threw its support to Mr. Yekhanurov and the latter's nomination was easily endorsed on September 22 with 289 votes (226 were required for approval).

Messrs. Yushchenko and Yanukovych outlined their political pact in the 10-point "Memorandum of Understanding Between the Authorities and the Opposition," which was signed by both politicians and by Mr. Yekhanurov shortly before the September 22 vote.

Some Ukrainian media have speculated that the memorandum was accompanied by a "secret protocol," in which President Yushchenko allegedly made even more concessions to Mr. Yanukovych in exchange for the latter's support for the new Cabinet. But even without any supplement, the memorandum is such a bewildering document that it has prompted many in Ukraine to assert that Mr. Yushchenko has betrayed the ideals of the November-December 2004 Orange Revolution and backed down on many of his election promises.

To start with, the memorandum stresses the need to implement the political reform that was a cornerstone of the compromise reached by Mr. Yushchenko and the Verkhovna Rada in the 2004 election standoff and that paved the way for his victory. According to a package of laws passed by the Verkhovna Rada on December 8, 2004, the political-reform law redistributing powers among the president, the Parliament and the prime minister is to take effect automatically on January 1, 2006. There was no apparent reason to include such a point in the memorandum, perhaps apart from Mr. Yanukovych's personal desire implicitly to insult President Yushchenko by suggesting that the latter might have played with the idea of canceling the reform in order not to lose his current presidential prerogatives.

Point two of the memorandum emphasizes "the impermissibility of political repression against the opposition." However one looks at this statement, it is obviously embarrassing and disadvantageous for Mr. Yushchenko. Because the phrase either implies that Mr. Yushchenko might resort to such repressions or provides the opposition with a strong point of reference if the authorities undertake any legal action against opposition figures who might violate the law.

However, the most stunning statement in the memorandum is the third point, whereby Mr. Yushchenko obliges himself to draft a bill on amnesty for those guilty of election fraud. It was the massive election fraud in the 2004 presidential election's second round that pushed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians into the streets and made Mr. Yushchenko's victory in the repeat second round possible.

Now President Yushchenko seems to have forgotten or ignored that fact and is offering general pardon for the fraudsters, taking upon himself the role of top judge. Additionally, in the fourth point Mr. Yushchenko agrees to legislation to extend immunity from criminal prosecution to local council members, which seems to be another guarantee of the unaccountability of many individuals involved in the 2004 election fraud. What has become of Mr. Yushchenko's solemn promise during the Orange Revolution to send "all bandits to jail"?

The signatories of the memorandum also agree that it is necessary to urgently adopt laws on the opposition, the Cabinet of Ministers and the president; form a Cabinet on the principle of separation of government from business; provide legislative guarantees of ownership rights; ban pressure on judicial bodies; and conduct the parliamentary and local elections on March 26, 2006, without governmental interference or the use of "administrative resources."

Each of these pledges, if interpreted in a manner unfavorable to President Yushchenko, represents a significant step back from Mr. Yushchenko's election manifesto or, at a minimum, testifies to Mr. Yushchenko's public humiliation by his former presidential rival, whose political career seemed to have been tarnished forever by his behavior in the 2004 presidential election.

"Signing the memorandum, the president may have earnestly wished to put an end to the crisis. But the price he paid was too high: the deal gave rise to a more serious crisis, a crisis of trust," the Kyiv-based weekly Zerkalo Nedeli opined.

And Mr. Yushchenko's staunch ally in the Orange Revolution, former Vice Prime Minister Mykola Tomenko, described the Yushchenko-Yanukovych pact in even more bitter words: "For the people, the ideals of the 'maidan' [Kyiv's Independence Square], mean that the law should be the same for everyone, that evil should always be punished and that those involved in corruption should be removed from politics," Mr. Tomenko wrote in an article for the Ukrayinska Pravda website on September 28. "For the new authorities, however, it is acceptable to collaborate with Mr. Yanukovych, who personifies all the worst features of the previous regime and who became the catalyst of the Orange Revolution."

Arguably, the Yushchenko-Yanukovych deal provides a lot of propagandistic ammunition for former Prime Minister Tymoshenko, who intends to launch her 2006 parliamentary election campaign under the slogan of continuing the Orange Revolution until a victorious conclusion and with the intent of regaining the job of prime minister after the elections. Now Ms. Tymoshenko can persuasively claim that she, not Mr. Yushchenko, has remained true to the Orange Revolution ideals.

A recent poll by the Kyiv-based Democratic Initiatives Fund found that Ms. Tymoshenko's eponymous bloc is supported by 20.7 percent of Ukrainians, about the same as Mr. Yanukovych's Party of the Regions. Mr. Yushchenko's Our Ukraine People's Union is third, with the support of 13.9 percent.

It seems that Mr. Yushchenko's political troubles, temporarily alleviated by the deal with his former rival, will return to him amplified by the 2006 parliamentary elections.

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

| Home Page |