Anti-Crisis Coalition nominates Yanukovych for PM (07/23/06)

Anti-Crisis Coalition nominates Yanukovych for PM

by Zenon Zawada
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - With the initial shock of the Anti-Crisis Coalition's emergence having simmered down, Ukrainians are adjusting to the fact that a Russian-oriented coalition, in all likelihood, will rule their government.

At its July 18 session, Verkhovna Rada Chair Oleksander Moroz declared that 241 members of Parliament now comprise the ruling coalition government, including six defectors from the Our Ukraine and Yulia Tymoshenko blocs.

"Now that the birth of our coalition was formally affirmed again today, I believe we've removed all obstacles that were before the president to quickly bring before the Parliament the candidacy of Viktor Yanukovych for prime minister," said Yevhen Kushnariov, a Party of the Regions national deputy.

That same morning, 235 national deputies of the coalition voted to support Mr. Yanukovych's nomination, which now sits on President Viktor Yushchenko's desk for his approval.

While, according to the Constitution, Mr. Yushchenko can't reject Mr. Yanukovych's nomination, he has the right to dismiss the Verkhovna Rada and call new elections, an option being firmly advocated by Yulia Tymoshenko.

Her political bloc and the youth-oriented Pora Citizens Party have been waging a heavy public campaign urging the president to dismiss the Rada.

Supporters have set up dozens of tents on Kyiv's Independence Square where they give out campaign literature and T-shirts by day and camp out at night.

Immense banners draped along the maidan read, "New Parliament for Ukraine!"

Once again, Ms. Tymoshenko holds Mr. Yushchenko's destiny in her hands, political experts said.

If she agrees to unite her political bloc with Our Ukraine in possible new elections, then Mr. Yushchenko would seriously consider dismissing Parliament, said Dr. Serhii Taran, chair of the Kyiv-based Socio-Vymir Center for Sociological and Political Research, which is financed by Ukrainian private firms.

Without the Tymoshenko Bloc's support, Our Ukraine will perform poorly in pre-term parliamentary elections because it has largely lost the public's support, experts said.

In new elections the Tymoshenko Bloc stands likely to gain votes from the Socialist Party of Ukraine and the Our Ukraine bloc, and Pora would have a chance of getting into Parliament.

So far, President Yushchenko has given no indication that he is willing to dismiss Parliament, and he has until July 25 deadline to make a decision.

However, Mr. Yushchenko will try everything at his disposal to avoid having Mr. Yanukovych become his prime minister, Dr. Taran said, which would be an immense political and even personal defeat. "For Mr. Yushchenko, this is his last chance to prove he is a highly influential person," he said.

To leverage the Anti-Crisis Coalition into withdrawing Mr. Yanukovych's nomination, Mr. Yushchenko could agree to have the Our Ukraine bloc join on the condition that the coalition selects a different candidate for prime minister, said Dr. Taran, a member of the Pora party.

After a July 20 afternoon meeting with President Yushchenko, Mr. Yanukovych said he saw a lot in common with his former nemesis and viewed it as possible that Our Ukraine would join the Anti-Crisis Coalition.

"I saw in the president's eyes a large desire to unite our efforts," Mr. Yanukovych said afterwards. "We'll do everything to find understanding with Our Ukraine in the soonest time and unite to resolve many issues."

Another option is for Our Ukraine to remain in the opposition yet tacitly support the Anti-Crisis Coalition's policies.

The new majority coalition announced on July 18 that it would assign 12 committee chairmanships to the Tymoshenko and Our Ukraine blocs - an impressive political development considering that the previously formed democratic coalition planned to give no positions to the Party of the Regions and the Communists.

Among the Our Ukraine politicians to receive committee chairmanships, the coalition gave Petro Poroshenko the Committee for Financial Issues and Banking Activit;, Mykola Martynenko the Committee for Fuel and Energy Issues, Nuclear Politics and Safety; Borys Tarasyuk the Committee for Euro-Integration Issue; and Volodymyr Stretovych the Committee for Law Enforcement Activities.

"That they gave Poroshenko and Martynenko committees shows the Party of the Regions is trying to assimilate the opposition," said Oles Doniy, chair of the Kyiv-based Center for Political Values Research and a member of the Socialist Party. "Now people are wondering whether the so-called 'democratic coalition' was truly that way."

As regards Tymoshenko Bloc politicians, the coalition gave Mykola Tomenko the Committee for Family, Youth and Sports Issues; Andrii Shevchenko the Committee for Freedom of Speech Issues; and Volodymyr Yavorivskyi the Committee for Cultural and Spiritual Issues.

The coalition also announced it was allowing Ms. Tymoshenko's close confidante Oleksander Turchynov to become vice-chairman of the Verkhovna Rada.

Party of the Regions National Deputy Mykola Azarov pointed out that the opposition members should chair their assigned committees with the understanding that they wouldn't obstruct the Anti-Crisis Coalition's political agenda.

The next day, Mr. Tomenko announced that the Tymoshenko Bloc national deputies would reject all the committee chairs offered by the Anti-Crisis Coalition and remain firmly in the opposition.

Ms. Tymoshenko then said Mr. Turchynov wouldn't accept the Rada's vice-chairmanship. "We don't need to divide up positions," she said. "We need to save Ukraine. Oleksander Turchynov will bring more benefit working in the committee halls rather than sitting like a mannequin in the presidium."

Our Ukraine, on the other hand, may end up taking its committee chairmanships and working in tandem with the Anti-Crisis Coalition without formally joining it, she said.

"This would mean surrendering those principles for which people rose up at the barricades," Ms. Tymoshenko said. "For 10 or so positions, they'd actually be surrendering Ukraine."

Kyiv's central district remains besieged by supporters of the Party of the Regions, who have set up their camp across from the Verkhovna Rada, and their rivals from the Tymoshenko Bloc and the Pora Party, who have settled Independence Square and Mariyinskyi Park across from the Cabinet of Ministers building.

Pora and Party of Regions held a friendly soccer match in the afternoon of July 17 on Trukhaniv Island in Kyiv. Among those playing were Pora leader Viacheslav Kaskiv and Party of Regions National Deputy Vitalii Khomutynnyk. More than 100 spectators watched as Pora handed the Regions players a 4-1 defeat.

In explaining his team's poor performance, Mr. Khomutynnyk said it was put together at the last minute, suggesting a rematch. He also commended the strong performance of Pora's goalie - after Mr. Kaskiv noted that he was a Donetsk native.

After the match, the two leaders shook hands and acknowledged the game was fair; players exchanged jerseys.

Party of the Regions supporters had arrived from cities throughout Ukraine to join the well-organized camp at the Parliament, which provides them with food, tents, friends and even makeshift places of worship.

Most agree with 70-year-old Luhansk resident Viktor Bezkrovnyi, who said the Orange Revolution was a coup staged by Mr. Yushchenko with American support, in which the Orange forces falsified the presidential vote.

Many said they were anticipating Mr. Yanukovych's return to power.

"I have been waiting for this day for a year and a half," said Andrii Diadyk, 37, who arrived from Odesa. "The Orange Revolution was a show - a public relations stunt to switch the political elites."

Among the Tymoshenko supporters were Orange Revolutionaries who have returned to their old stomping grounds.

Andrii Ostrozhnyi, 40, said he was camped in Tent B26 of the Orange Republic at the corner of Prorizna Street and the Khreschatyk from November 25, 2004, to January 21, 2005.

He couldn't have imagined that he'd have to come out on the maidan again.

"Lenin said every revolution has value if you know how to defend it," Mr. Ostrozhnyi said. "So I came to defend the democracy we achieved."

Like many Orange supporters, Roman Cherneha, 27, of Vinnytsia said he fears the Party of the Regions will exact revenge when retaking power. "Democratic values will be disgraced," he said. "We can lose everything we gained."

The Tymoshenko Bloc will refuse to participate in a parliamentary session until July 25, the day when the president has to decide whether to accept Mr. Yanukovych's candidacy or dismiss Parliament. The bloc leader called on Ukrainian patriots to prevent Mr. Yanukovych from becoming prime minister.

It has also begun to gather signatures of those national deputies willing to resign their positions with the goal of forcing a dismissal of Parliament, given that it needs a two-thirds majority to function.

The Tymoshenko Bloc, with 125 deputies, needs the help of Our Ukraine deputies in order to gain the critical number of 151 national deputies who could resign and thereby force Parliament's dismissal.

Meanwhile, the Party of the Regions has allocated for itself nine Verkhovna Rada committee chairmanships, including the powerful Budget Committee, to be headed by Mykola Azarov; the Regulations Committee, chaired by Anton Pryhodskyi; the Committee for Legal Policy, chaired by Mr. Kushnariov; and the Committee for Judicial Affairs, chaired by Serhii Kivalov, the discredited chairman of the Central Elections Committee at the time of the fraudulent 2004 presidential election.

Anti-Crisis deputies will also have a majority on virtually all the Parliament's committees, even those chaired by opposition deputies, Mr. Doniy said.

Through its formation of the government coalition, the Party of the Regions has demonstrated to the public it is effective at management, he said. What took the democratic coalition three months and 120 pages, the Anti-Crisis partners did in three weeks and 12 pages.

"For the democratic coalition, the agreement was a pretext for dragging out the process," Mr. Doniy said. "Yushchenko desperately didn't want to see Tymoshenko as prime minister, so the process was prolonged to the maximum. Now there is a 120-page agreement in the garbage, while these 12 pages enabled a new coalition to form."

The emergence of the Anti-Crisis Coalition is yet another immense failure of the Yushchenko presidency, many political experts said.

"Without a doubt, the Regions have emerged from the crisis looking stronger," said Mr. Doniy. "The Orange coalition showed ineffective management and an inability to resolve personal ambitions."

The Orange Revolution's leaders weren't able to put aside their personal ambitions and party agendas in order to pursue political policies furthering the Ukrainian nation's interest, Dr. Taran said.

"Ukrainian politics has a crisis for one reason - personalities and ambitions rather than policies and agendas," he added.

The Party of the Regions also demonstrated its newfound ability to deal with embarrassing scandals.

At the party's tent city established outside the Verkhovna Rada on July 12, Regions National Deputy Oleh Kalashnikov led a group in approaching an STB television reporter and cameraman, demanding they surrender videotape of recorded materials.

When the cameraman attempted to flee, the Regions group threw him to the ground and forcibly seized the tape from him.

More than 800 members of the Ukrainian media signed a petition demanding, among other things, that the Party of the Regions return the videotape, exclude Mr. Kalashnikov from the parliamentary faction and agree to criminal charges brought against him.

On July 20 Mr. Yanukovych gave the order removing Mr. Kalashnikov from the Party of the Regions parliamentary faction.

"They're showing that they want to be democratic and open, whether or not that's truly the case," Mr. Doniy said.

However, not everyone is at ease with the Regions' response.

Tymoshenko supporter Mr. Ostrozhnyi believes Mr. Kalashnikov's actions are a sign of things to come. "Freedom of speech will be destroyed," he said. "We can already see it happening with what Yanukovych's deputies did to the STB reporters."

Meanwhile, the U.S. government continued to maintain a neutral position on Ukrainian politics, without indicating whether it favors one parliamentary coalition over another.

It's unclear at this point how much oriented toward the Russian Federation the Anti-Crisis Coalition will be.

While the new coalition is admittedly oriented along Russian political and cultural lines, it is not Moscow-centric, Mr. Doniy said.

Both the Party of the Regions and the Socialists have Euro-integration policies in their party platforms, he said.

However, the Anti-Crisis Coalition will firmly oppose Ukrainian membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Dr. Taran said.

It's also not likely to be proactive in initiating the necessary political efforts to draw Ukraine closer to the European Union, experts said.

Acting Minister of the Economy Arsenii Yatseniuk has already voiced his concern that the new coalition government won't approve the few remaining international trade agreements Ukraine needs for World Trade Organization membership. These include agreements with Colombia, Kyrgyzstan and Taiwan.

The Socialists and Communists are fervently against Ukraine's membership in the WTO.

In a meeting this week with Mr. Moroz, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor said the U.S. supports Russia and Ukraine entering the WTO simultaneously, according to Viktoria Shvedova, the director the Verkhovna Rada's press office.

Translator Mykola Soroka contributed to this report.

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