ANALYSIS: Taking a closer look at Ukraine's newly formed Cabinet of Ministers (08/20/06)

ANALYSIS

Taking a closer look at Ukraine's newly formed Cabinet of Ministers

by Jan Maksymiuk
RFE/RL Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova Report

Ukraine's tortuous, four-month-long process of forming a new government ended on August 4 with the confirmation of Party of the Regions leader Viktor Yanukovych as new prime minister.

The Ukrainian Parliament also endorsed a new Cabinet of Ministers, in which the Party of the Regions will control some major portfolios concerning the country's economy.

Mr. Yanukovych will have four deputies, as he had in the Cabinet he oversaw during his previous stint as prime minister in 2002-2004. Mykola Azarov will serve as both first vice prime minister and finance minister, as he did during Mr. Yanukovych's first term. The three vice prime ministers will also take on additional roles. Andrii Kliuyev will be in charge of the fuel and energy sector, Dmytro Tabachnyk will oversee humanitarian and social issues, and Volodymyr Rybak will head the Construction Ministry.

Messrs. Azarov and Kliuyev are among Mr. Yanukovych's oldest and staunchest allies. Mr. Azarov is generally seen as a technocrat. As head of the State Tax Administration in 1996-2002, he was repeatedly accused by the opposition of applying fiscal and tax pressure on businesses linked to political opponents of former President Leonid Kuchma.

Mr. Kliuyev is a wealthy businessman with interests in the machine-building sector who led the Yanukovych campaign team in the 2004 presidential election. He was rumored to be the main player behind the falsification of election results in favor of Mr. Yanukovych, although those rumors have never been confirmed by investigators.

The Party of the Regions quota of ministerial posts also includes Minister for Liaison with the Verkhovna Rada Ivan Tkalenko, Labor Minister Mykhailo Papiyev, Environment Minister Vasyl Dzharty, Coal Industry Minister Serhii Tulub, Fuel and Energy Minister Yurii Boyko, Economy Minister Volodymyr Makukha and Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers Anatolii Tolstoukhov.

Virtually all of the Party of the Regions ministers have considerable experience in serving in senior government posts. This favorably distinguishes Mr. Yanukovych's Cabinet in comparison to that led by Yulia Tymoshenko in 2005. Her Cabinet to a large extent consisted of Orange Revolution personalities with little or no experience in government.

It can be expected that the new Ukrainian Cabinet should easily be able to agree on a basic set of economic reforms, which will be needed to continue the current positive trends in the economy. After all, it was under Mr. Yanukovych's prime ministership in 2004 that Ukraine posted impressive economic growth of 12 percent.

However, a disturbing feature of Mr. Yanukovych's Cabinet is that - as in virtually all former Ukrainian Cabinets - there is no clear separation between politics and business. Many Cabinet members have vested interests in different business spheres. This could become a seed of future conflicts in the uneasy "coalition of national unity," which includes not only ministers from the largely oligarchic Our Ukraine, but also from the Marxist-Leninist Socialist Party.

In accordance with the Constitution amended in 2004, President Yushchenko nominated the foreign affairs minister and the defense minister, Borys Tarasyuk and Anatolii Hrytsenko, respectively. Both politicians are strongly supportive of Ukraine's integration with Euro-Atlantic structures and were delegated by Mr. Yushchenko to assure the public both at home and abroad that Ukraine's pro-Western course will not undergo any significant changes under Mr. Yanukovych's prime ministership.

Internal Affairs Minister Yurii Lutsenko, a former Socialist Party member who is now independent, is also seen as a Yushchenko man in the government. Mr. Lutsenko, an iconic leader of the Orange Revolution, is widely seen as an uncompromising custodian of the "Augean Stables," to which Ukraine's notoriously corrupt police force is sometimes compared.

In accepting his post, Mr. Lutsenko asserted that he sees the possibility of implementing the president's policies in the Yanukovych Cabinet. However, most Ukrainians have apparently not yet forgotten that he completely failed to implement a major tenet of the Orange Revolution - "bandits will go to jail" - in the preceding Cabinets of Ms. Tymoshenko and Mr. Yekhanurov. No major investigation by the Internal Affairs Ministry into corruption or election falsification has resulted in jail terms. It is hard to imagine that Mr. Lutsenko will be more successful now that some of the "bandits" have returned to the government.

Our Ukraine, which has yet to sign a formal coalition accord with the three other parties in the Cabinet, is represented by Justice Minister Roman Zvarych, Family and Sports Minister Yurii Pavlenko, Emergency Situations Minister Viktor Baloha, Culture Minister Ihor Likhovyi, and Health Minister Yurii Poliachenko.

Taking into account that the Verkhovna Rada is headed by Oleksander Moroz of the Socialist Party and that all vice prime-minister positions are filled by people from the Party of the Regions, it is clear that the pro-presidential Our Ukraine has no major post in the government. This is the price Our Ukraine had to pay for its clumsy coalition negotiations following the March 26 parliamentary elections and its protracted hesitancy over whom it likes more - Ms. Tymoshenko or Mr. Yanukovych.

Our Ukraine supported Mr. Yanukovych for prime minister on August 4 only half-heartedly: just 30 of the party's 80 lawmakers voted in Mr. Yanukovych's favor. It appears that the cohabitation of Our Ukraine with the Party of the Regions in the ruling coalition - irrespective of whether it will be formalized or not - will not be easy. There seems to be a pervading mood of frustration and political failure among a majority of Our Ukraine leaders and rank-and-file activists.

The Socialist Party is represented in the new Cabinet by Education Minister Stanislav Nikolayenko and Transport Minister Mykola Rudkovskyi. While Mr. Nikolayenko is seen as a good specialist in education and his reappointment was to be expected, Mr. Rudkovskyi's main contribution to Ukraine's transportation system seems to lie in his fondness for driving expensive cars and wearing smart suits.

The political affiliation of Agroindustrial Complex Minister Yurii Melnyk and Industrial Policy Minister Anatolii Holovko is not clear. Theoretically, they should belong to the quota of the Communist Party, which brings 21 votes to the coalition. But Mr. Melnyk is known for his anti-Communist views and pronouncements. Some Ukrainian media suggest that the Communists exchanged their Cabinet portfolios for an undisclosed sum, which was paid by some unidentified sponsors.

On the whole, Mr. Yanukovych's Cabinet seems to be more carefully assorted in terms of professionalism than those of Mr. Yekhanurov and Ms. Tymoshenko. But it is too early to predict whether the new government will become an immediate success or can contribute something substantial to bridging the east-west divide in the country, as some commentators expect. In actual fact, neither the 2004 Orange Revolution nor the 2006 parliamentary elections have brought any significant changing of the guard in Ukrainian politics. Instead, it is the country's voters who seem to have undergone an important transformation. They are now more politically active and more inclined to judge their political leaders by deeds rather than pledges. And if the trend of Ukrainian voters keeping a watchful eye on their government continues, their chances of seeing a change in their political elite might improve.

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

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