Tymoshenko and Moroz say Our Ukraine is backing out of forming Orange coalition (04/09/06)

Tymoshenko and Moroz say Our Ukraine is backing out of forming Orange coalition

by Zenon Zawada
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Orange Revolution leaders Yulia Tymoshenko and Oleksander Moroz accused Our Ukraine's leadership of trying to back out of forming an Orange coalition in the newly elected Verkhovna Rada.

Their accusations came after Prime Minister Yurii Yekhanurov and Our Ukraine Election Campaign Chief Roman Bezsmertnyi met with the two leaders at the start of the week, presenting them with a proposal.

The conditions didn't satisfy Mr. Moroz and Ms. Tymoshenko, who held a joint press conference on April 6, accusing Our Ukraine's leaders of trying to buy time as they negotiated with the Party of the Regions.

"It's absolutely incomprehensible why today, exactly the 10th day after elections were held, not a single real step has been made toward a coalition," Ms. Tymoshenko said.

Our Ukraine's proposal doesn't distinguish who gets which posts, including the prime ministership, a position that Ms. Tymoshenko said she must have if her bloc is willing to form a coalition. Most of Our Ukraine's leadership is against her candidacy for prime minister, Ms. Tymoshenko added.

"I absolutely know that these boys, who did a lot toward ruining the hopes of the Orange Revolution, would rather eat their hands than sign a memorandum in which our political force has the right to form the government," Ms. Tymoshenko said.

Our Ukraine will not discuss distributing positions until it has worked out the coalition's by-laws, Mr. Bezsmertnyi said.

Much to Mr. Moroz's concern, the proposal also doesn't rule out attempts to cancel the constitutional reforms that went into effect January 1, which shifted the balance of power from the presidency to the prime ministership.

President Viktor Yushchenko had earlier pledged not to attempt to cancel the constitutional reforms.

Ukraine's Orange electorate is becoming jittery at the prospect of an Our Ukraine-Party of the Regions coalition.

Following Mr. Moroz's criticisms, President Viktor Yushchenko said the proposal presented to the leaders was merely "a beginning of discussions" and his bloc is trying to form an Orange coalition.

However, he then indicated that he's not entirely sold on the idea. "We should be honest and acknowledge that, eight months ago, this coalition existed," Mr. Yushchenko said. "It fell apart and lessons were drawn."

Mr. Moroz's relations with Mr. Yushchenko deteriorated sharply on April 4 after the Socialists joined with the Party of the Regions in blocking the Verkhovna Rada's rostrum. They managed to cancel the session and prevent a vote to approve judges to Ukraine's Constitutional Court.

For months, Mr. Yushchenko has attempted to fill vacancies on the court in order to establish a quorum.

Mr. Moroz believes the president is trying to get the Constitutional Court to convene in order to cancel the constitutional reforms, thereby restoring the powers to the presidency that had existed up until January 1.

Among those powers was appointing the prime minister, which is now the prerogative of the Verkhovna Rada.

In a gesture that Mr. Moroz and Ms. Tymoshenko said they didn't consider genuine, the Our Ukraine People's Union (OUPU) voted on April 5 to support the formation of a coalition of democratic forces.

The party's political council, which has 186 members, voted to extend the proposal to the leaders of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc and the Socialist Party of Ukraine, but not to the Party of the Regions or the Communist Party of Ukraine. The proposed coalition would have a total of 243 votes in the 450-seat Verkhovna Rada.

"Relying on the faith of the Ukrainian people and driven by the responsibility for Ukraine's future, we announce our intentions to create a coalition of democratic forces after forming factions in the Verkhovna Rada's fifth session," the document states.

Factions are the political groupings in Parliament, while parties are political organizations outside Parliament. Blocs form when political parties unite. Often, parliamentary factions directly reflect parties or blocs.

The OUPU is one of six parties that belong to the Our Ukraine bloc.

The OUPU proposal, which reportedly is similar to what was presented to Ms. Tymoshenko and Mr. Moroz, outlines five goals the coalition members would have to abide by that work toward realizing President Yushchenko's goals.

They are: ensuring stable, socio-economic growth oriented toward improving citizens' wealth; strengthening public society; ensuring people's freedom and rights; promoting free development of business and support for private initiatives; recognizing the irreversibility of the Euro-integration process.

Like the proposal presented by Mr. Yekhanurov, this one lacked any specifics, disappointing the Tymoshenko Bloc and the Socialist Party.

"In this document there are no clear indicators of what concrete steps Our Ukraine will take in the future coalition and new government, and how to resolve social issues, problems related to the battle with corruption and so forth," said Mykola Tomenko, the assistant chair of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc.

The business wing of the Our Ukraine bloc prepared the proposal, "which is doing everything so that the Orange coalition will not form and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc declines it," Mr. Tomenko added.

The Our Ukraine political council didn't discuss creating a coalition with the Party of the Regions, Mr. Bezsmertnyi said. Some of the Regions' positions remain unacceptable, he said, including a federal system of governance for Ukraine, a shift in foreign policy vectors, official status for the Russian language and opposition to Ukraine's membership in NATO.

Most of Ukraine's political experts believe that an Orange coalition will form, but then will inevitably disintegrate within several months.

Some theorize that Our Ukraine plans to rotate coalitions, first with the Orange forces and then with the Party of the Regions.

In a somewhat surprising turn of events, Western leaders, businessmen and experts are examining the potential benefits of an Our Ukraine-Party of the Regions coalition, mostly out of concern about Ms. Tymoshenko's economic policies.

During her prime ministership, Ms. Tymoshenko roiled many Western business and political leaders when she advocated mass re-privatizations and applied government price controls on Ukraine's energy and agricultural markets.

"The widespread view of economists is that her policies decreased business confidence and slowed investment," Oleksander Valchyshyn, the head of research at ING Bank in Kyiv, told the Financial Times.

Ms. Tymoshenko said her enemies are baselessly labeling her a "populist" or "anti-market" to discredit her.

Following the elections, Ms. Tymoshenko said she favored radically cutting corporate tax rates, as well as stopping re-privatization.

When asked by The Weekly's Kyiv bureau at a February 20 press conference to point to evidence that she is committed to free markets, Ms. Tymoshenko rattled off seven accomplishments.

Kryvorizhstal was Ukraine's first transparent, honest and truly acceptable re-privatization, and Ms. Tymoshenko said she lobbied hard to ensure it wouldn't fall back into the hands of Viktor Pinchuk and Rynat Akhmetov, its former owners.

"I would want further auctions to be conducted absolutely in the same way in Ukraine, regarding the sale of our properties for privatization," Ms. Tymoshenko said.

Ms. Tymoshenko said her government canceled more than 5,000 laws that gave government officials extraordinary rights over business enterprises, creating a corrupt system of bribery. She wants to cancel more such laws, she said.

Free economic zones that became abused by local businesses were also canceled, Ms. Tymoshenko said.

"We created honest, equal - absolutely equal - conditions for the operation of any business in Ukraine," she said. "We closed all benefits and all possible deviations, based on certain lobbied bills, as to the payment of taxes, creating equal conditions for everyone."

Import tariffs were restructured under her government, which reduced contraband imports to a third of what they were, she said.

"Other than that, I want to remind our critics who speak of the non-market nature of my government that the first and last WTO laws were passed under our government, and this was regardless of the make-up of the Parliament," Ms. Tymoshenko said.

She submitted for the Parliament's approval a law that would reduce the time it takes for agricultural land to become used for investment purposes from three years to practically half a year, Ms. Tymoshenko said, pointing out that the Verkhovna Rada didn't approve the measure. The bill came within five or six signatures for passage, she said.

Her government also re-worked a new strategic concept for Ukraine's energy independence and safety, Ms. Tymoshenko said. "It offers a solution for Ukraine to find a way out of its energy dependence without crises, but on a calm basis," she said.

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