THE ORANGE REVOLUTION ONE YEAR AFTER: Yushchenko's first year: a Western perspective (PART I) (11/20/05)

THE ORANGE REVOLUTION ONE YEAR AFTER

Yushchenko's first year: a Western perspective

by Dr. Taras Kuzio

The Orange Revolution began in Ukraine after massive election fraud in the second round of the presidential election brought hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians onto the streets of Kyiv. After weeks of protests and a repeat election, the pro-reform candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, was elected president.

Ukraine's Orange Revolution has become an inspiration for other oppositions to authoritarian regimes. It inspired revolutions in Kyrgyzstan and Lebanon; civil society activists in Russia, Azerbaijan and Belarus routinely wear Orange symbols. President Yushchenko told the BBC that his country has "set a good example for the millions of people who still cherish freedom and democracy."

In the first year of the Orange Revolution, Ukraine has made considerable progress in 15 areas, while progress has been disappointing in seven. To keep this relative progress going beyond the 2006 parliamentary elections, the Orange coalition will have to reunite President Yushchenko's Our Ukraine People's Union and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's bloc. Only through the reunification of the Orange coalition can a pro-reform parliamentary majority be created that will continue to promote Ukraine's reform and Euro-Atlantic integration.

PART I

15 areas of progress

1. Human rights and democratization: As the European Union has noted, Ukraine's Orange Revolution and election of Mr. Yushchenko put the country back on its democratic track, which had been stalled in Leonid Kuchma's second term. Since the late 1990s most CIS states have evolved toward authoritarian regimes and "managed democracies." Ukraine would have entered such a path if Viktor Yanukovych had been elected Ukraine's president. The Donetsk region he governed from 1997 to 2002 was Ukraine's best example of a mini, trial "managed democracy" ruled by one oligarch, one party and one television channel.

A recent EU report noted that there are no systematic human rights violations in Ukraine. In August a Kyiv Post editorial noted that the Ukrainian government is a "mismatched and inefficient collection of true reformers, idealists, ambitious operators, bunglers and schemers, but are not sinister."
2. Civic empowerment: The Orange Revolution represented the largest civic action in Europe since the Velvet Revolution brought down Communist rule in Czechoslovakia in 1989. Ukraine's revolution was the third in a string of what became known as "colored evolutions," beginning with Serbia in 2000 and Georgia in 2003. Following Ukraine, revolutions have taken place in Kyrgyzstan and Lebanon.

The number of Ukrainians who took part in Orange protests is astounding. Throughout the country, one in five Ukrainians took part in protests locally or in Kyiv. In Kyiv itself, 48 percent of its 2.5 million population took part in the Orange Revolution.

A September poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology asked if Ukrainians were ready to defend their civil rights? Fifty-one percent said "yes" (and only 22 percent said "no"). In western and central Ukraine this was as high as 65 percent. Compare this empowerment with the low level of efficacy, despondency and pessimism found among Ukrainians in the Kuchma era. Ninety percent of Ukrainians then did not feel they could exert any influence on the central or local authorities.

Civic participation in the Orange Revolution changed Ukrainians and Ukraine forever. The protests transformed the Soviet-era relationship of subjects working for the state into fully fledged citizens who demand that the state works for them. Ukrainians, who were traditionally viewed as passive by Soviet and post-Soviet rulers, will no longer remain passive. Opinion polls since the Orange Revolution show that a large majority remain committed to defending their civic rights, if they are again threatened.

President Yushchenko said in October: "The processes that have occurred in the nation are a wholly positive process. You have become different. The nation has become different. We have all become different. The revolution brought freedom to Ukraine."
3. A more democratic political system: In two months' time, Ukraine will change to a parliamentary-presidential system commonly found in central Europe and the Baltic states. These parliamentary systems have assisted in these countries' democratic progress and Euro-Atlantic integration.

Presidential systems, which are commonly found in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), have led to authoritarian regimes and executive abuse of office. Executive abuse of office was rife in Ukraine under the Kuchma regime.
4. Media freedom: Ukraine's media environment has been transformed. The Social Democratic Party - United (SDPU) has lost control over three television channels it controlled (State Channel 1, 1+1, Inter). Other channels controlled by Viktor Pinchuk (ICTV, STB, Novyi Kanal), have become more balanced.

The Internet received a major boost from the 2004 elections. The Orange Revolution has been described as the world's first "Internet revolution." Today, nearly 20 percent of Ukrainians use the Internet regularly - particularly young people.

International media watchdogs, such as Reporters Without Borders, have recorded considerable improvement this year in Ukraine's media freedom. Ukraine's ranking (112th) in the 2005 annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index is far higher than Russia's (138th) or Belarus' (152nd). Ukrainian journalists now work in a free environment, no longer fearful of arrest or violence. Gone are the "temnyky" censorship instructions issued by the Kuchma administration to television stations.

Journalists and the public have greater trust in the media. Between September 2004 and September of the following year trust increased for the most biased and censored television stations (State Channel 1, 1+1, Inter).
5. Reconfiguration of the political system: The Socialists, allied with President Yushchenko since the Orange Revolution, are now the leading left-wing party, rather than the Communists whose allegiance to the Ukrainian state was always suspect. The Communist Party will have only about 30 seats in the 2006 Parliament, down from 120 in the 1998.

Formerly pro-Kuchma centrists are in disarray. Only one of the three large centrist parties from the Kuchma era (Party of the Regions of Ukraine) will enter the 2006 Parliament. The Social Democratic United and Labor Ukraine parties each have ratings of 1 percent. SDPU leader Viktor Medvedchuk has a -60 percent negative rating, thanks to heading the presidential administration during the last two years of Mr. Kuchma's rule. Relations between Mr. Medvedchuk's party and the Party of the Regions are poor, as the Donetsk clan and Mr. Yanukovych believe Kuchma-Medvedchuk "betrayed" them during the Orange Revolution.
6. Battling corruption: Ukraine under President Kuchma was internationally perceived as a highly corrupt state that flouted its own laws, as well as international norms and sanctions. The first year of the Yushchenko administration has seen Ukraine moving from the virtual struggle against corruption under Mr. Kuchma to a modest attempt at battling this problem.

Some 4,500 regulations to register businesses, which were a source of corruption, have been annulled. There is now a single window to register businesses and a single window to clear customs. Previously a new business venture had to seek permits from 34 structures, which bred corruption.

More needs to be done. Fifty-two percent of Ukrainians believe some progress has taken place but more needs to be undertaken. Transparency International, a think-tank researching corruption around the world, has recorded gains in Ukraine this year. Its 2005 Corruption Perceptions Index provides evidence that policies introduced this year to battle corruption are producing results. Ukraine's improved ranking "resulted in an increased sense of optimism regarding governance and corruption in Ukraine."

The successful re-privatization of Kryvorizhstal last month for $4.8 billion to a Dutch company - six times what was paid for it by Ukrainian oligarchs close to Mr. Kuchma in 2004 - has been internationally praised for its transparency. Ukraine's oligarchs, the mainstay of the Kuchma regime, have been warned that their days of a cozy and corrupt relationship with the executive are over under the Yushchenko administration.
7. End of the era of oligarchs (or "robber barons"): The time when oligarchs could earn high rents from a corrupt and close relationship with the executive is over. The Yushchenko administration has outlined a deal whereby, in exchange for no further re-privatizations, oligarchs now have to evolve into law-abiding businessmen. This means an end to corrupt business practices, moving their business activities out of the shadow economy and increasing their tax payments.
8. Geater attention to meeting the social needs of the population: The minimum pension was increased to the same level as the minimum wage. Wages for those employed by the state increased by 57 percent. Social welfare spending, including child support to encourage Ukraine to move out of its demographic crisis, has grown in 2005 by 73 percent.
9. Prospects for national integration: These are now the best they have been since Ukraine became an independent state. Unlike former Presidents Leonid Kravchuk and Kuchma, President Yushchenko is committed to nation-building and an evolutionary affirmative action for the Ukrainian language. The Kuchma regime, as evidenced during the 2004 elections, played on Ukraine's regional divisions to encourage regional conflict between western and eastern Ukraine.
10. Religion: The Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church has moved its headquarters to Kyiv, a move that would have been hampered under Mr. Kuchma. Prospects for the unification of the Orthodox Churches in Ukraine are now far greater. Former President Kuchma talked of unifying the Orthodox Churches but never undertook any action and in reality leaned toward the Russian Orthodox Church.
Ukraine's democratic prospects: Improvement of Ukraine's prospects in this regard are in sharp contrast to their decline in Russia. In the same year (2004) that Ukraine experienced a democratic breakthrough, Russia fell further into an autocratic abyss. In the aftermath of Russian fraudulent parliamentary and presidential elections, the New York-based human rights think-tank Freedom House downgraded Russia from "partly free" to "unfree" - the first time Russia has been listed in this category since the collapse of the USSR.

Russia is undergoing a "crisis of liberalism" at a time when Ukraine has a liberal in power. In Russia, liberals were in power in the early 1990s but have been progressively marginalized ever since. In Ukraine, the former national communists (Kravchuk, Kuchma) who became centrists allied to oligarchs, were in power until 2004. The election of Mr. Yushchenko is the first time the liberal camp has taken power.

The 2004 breakthrough "reinvigorated and jump-started the democratic political development" of Ukraine, Freedom House concluded. Ukraine recorded significant progress in four areas: electoral process, civil society, independent media, and the judicial framework. In the same year, Russia registered the greatest decline of any country in the Nations in Transit survey. This decline was in the very same four areas as Ukraine registered progress.

Freedom House's Nations in Transit scores show Ukraine's progress vis-a-vis Russia's in many key areas. These include the electoral process, civil society, independent media and democracy. Ukraine's "Democracy Score" (4.5) is better than Russia's at 5.61 or Belarus's at 6.64, out of a range of 1-7 with 7 being the worst score. But, Ukraine's 4.5 score is also moving closer to the 3.75 given to Croatia, which is a possible candidate for EU membership in 2007 alongside Romania (3.39) and Bulgaria (3.18). Of the four colored revolutions, Ukraine's Democracy Score is the same as Serbia's (3.75), and better than Georgia's (4.96) and Kyrgyzstan's (5.64).
12. Progressive clean-up of the security force apparatus: The Internal Affairs Ministry, under its energetic minister, Yurii Lutsenko, has pushed through 5,000 voluntary resignations; 2,000 have failed to pass their personal certification; and 400 have been charged. Similar clean-ups are being undertaken in the Customs and Tax services.
13. Change in Ukraine's foreign policy: Under President Yushchenko, Ukraine's foreign policy will be driven by national interests and not the personal whims of the president and his oligarch allies. For the first time, Ukraine's foreign policy is ideologically driven in its "return to Europe" formulation.

By the March 2006 elections, Ukraine will have achieved progress in two areas. First, the lifting of the Jackson-Vanik amendment. Second, free market status granted by the EU and the U.S.. A third step, WTO membership, is less likely to be achieved in 2005 and more certain in 2006. A NATO invitation to Ukraine for a Membership Action Plan in mid-2006 also is likely if Ukraine holds free parliamentary elections.
14. Relations with the U.S.: The aforementioned progress would follow upon greatly improved relations with the United States after President Yushchenko's visit to the U.S. in April. Ukraine under Mr. Yushchenko will be a true strategic partner of the U.S. in a wide range of international issues, ranging from the global war on terrorism, combating proliferation, Iraq and promotion of democracy.
15. Prospects for 2006 elections: Ukraine's parliamentary elections will be held without abuse of state-administrative resources and with free media. Outgoing Prime Minister Tymoshenko said that, "The Orange Revolution has changed our country. Politicians understand that the people won't accept fraud. Vote-rigging now is just as unrealistic as anti-corruption investigations were in the Kuchma era."

Elections in Ukraine, as throughout the CIS, became progressively unfree since the late 1990s. The culmination of this was the 2004 presidential election which was denounced by the international community. The return to free elections would prove to the West that Ukraine has returned to the democratic path from which it had veered in the late 1990s.

In next week's conclusion: seven problem areas.

Taras Kuzio is visiting professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. The article above is taken from the text of Dr. Kuzio's presentation on November 14 at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy.

PART I

PART II

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