The political divorce of Viktor and Yulia
by Zenon Zawada
Kyiv Press Bureau
PART I
The following is the first article in a two-part series examining the political relationship between Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, which came to an end one year ago.
KYIV - It was the political divorce that shook the world.
One year ago, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko announced his decision to fire the woman who had helped him lead Ukrainians through the Orange Revolution.
Until that point, Yulia Tymoshenko was Mr. Yushchenko's loyal supporter and partner for more than five years, ever since serving as his vice prime minister.
Discord surfaced between them soon after the Orange Revolutionaries came to power, but few knew it was serious enough to warrant so drastic a split.
President Yush-chenko's dismissal of Prime Minister Tymoshenko and her Cabinet of Ministers initiated a downward spiral of disillusionment for the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who braved freezing weather and placed their lives and careers at risk for the Orange Revolution.
A year later, the factors causing the rift, the people involved and their motivations continue to elude even the most well-connected political insiders and observers.
Was Mr. Yushchenko intimidated by Ms. Tymoshenko's rising popularity, or was she truly plotting a careful scheme to overtake him?
Was Mr. Yushchenko acting on behalf of a corrupt entourage that wanted to stop Ms. Tymoshenko from meddling in their affairs?
Or was she advancing her own business interests, as the president alleged afterwards?
A broad picture can be drawn from consulting political experts and analyzing the public statements made by those involved.
The real reasons for the partnership's collapse, however, may forever remain elusive - even for the main players themselves.
Ideal complements
Mr. Yushchenko's political partnership with Ms. Tymoshenko began in late 1999, when former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma had nominated the National Bank of Ukraine chairman as prime minister.
Various reasons are believed to have motivated Mr. Kuchma to select Mr. Yushchenko.
Some political observers believe Mr. Kuchma perceived Mr. Yushchenko as a benign, detached banker who wouldn't pose much of a threat to his den of corruption.
Others believe Mr. Kuchma needed to appear that he was making some attempts at reform in order to secure further funding from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other international structures.
A young, progressive banker who had recently helped establish Ukraine's first stable currency would have been an ideal cover for the notoriously corrupt Mr. Kuchma.
When Mr. Yushchenko was making the rounds in the Verkhovna Rada to build support for his nomination, Ms. Tymoshenko approached him with a stack of papers about 18 inches high, said Ivan Lozowy, a Kyiv political insider and graduate of New York University School of Law.
"It was her plans and projects for the energy sector," he said.
Impressed with her initiative and penchant for reform, Mr. Yushchenko told Mr. Kuchma that he wanted Ms. Tymoshenko to serve as his vice prime minister of the fuel and energy complex.
At the time, Ms. Tymoshenko was already an outspoken enemy of Mr. Kuchma as a national deputy and leader of a radical, reformist political force.
Kyiv was stunned when Mr. Kuchma approved her nomination to the post.
"I think Kuchma did it on the calculation that she would lose her deputy's immunity," Mr. Lozowy said, adding that the strategy worked to some extent. "What they eventually did is remove her from the post and began repressing her."
Though always an obstacle to Mr. Kuchma, she was a boon to Mr. Yushchenko.
Upon taking office, Ms. Tymoshenko began rooting out corrupt officials and practices in Ukraine's energy industry as part of her "Clean Energy" campaign, generating new sources of revenue for the government.
She particularly targeted the electricity sector, where she managed to increase revenues by several thousand percent by requiring industrial customers to pay with cash instead of barter.
In her one year of leading the nation's fuel and energy issues, Ms. Tymoshenko managed to raise about $2 billion in additional tax revenue - an "astronomical" sum that amounted to one-third of the government budget, Mr. Lozowy said.
"Yushchenko used this money wisely to distribute it to the population, paying salary debts to government employees, raising pensions and covering pension debts," he said. "She made him, and she's known that all the time."
After only a year in office, Mr. Kuchma fired Ms. Tymoshenko, accusing her of corruption and engaging in publicity stunts. Parliament then voted out Mr. Yushchenko four months later.
The young, dynamic pair of reformists had stepped on too many toes, and they were getting too popular.
Mr. Yushchenko's approval rating reached as high as 40 percent - unprecedented for a Ukrainian politician.
By allowing Mr. Yushchenko and Ms. Tymoshenko to lead a reform-minded government, Mr. Kuchma soldered together a political partnership that would come back to haunt him three years later in the form of the Orange Revolution.
Having helped create his popularity, Ms. Tymoshenko remained devotedly loyal to Mr. Yushchenko ever since, especially after being jailed by Mr. Kuchma for six weeks in February 2001.
"As a grown person in business and politics, she always has been a protégé of a man - first (Pavlo) Lazarenko, then Yush-chenko," Mr. Lozowy said. "It gives her a kind of psychological dependency."
Other political experts believe Ms. Tymoshenko was far more calculated in her support for Mr. Yushchenko.
"Viktor Yushchenko was a necessary step for Yulia Tymoshenko's further advance to the top," said Oles Doniy, chair of the Kyiv-based Center for Political Values Research, which is supported by Ukrainian citizens and is seeking international financing.
"Politically, he was necessary for her. She told him what he wanted to hear - that he would be president, that he was the wisest, the best leader. She knows how to say these things, and he enjoyed this. With this baggage, they came to the election campaign and the Orange Revolution," Mr. Doniy related.
When Ms. Tymoshenko began supporting Mr. Yushchenko's presidential candidacy as early as December 2003, she was essentially laying the groundwork for their leadership of the Orange Revolution.
Their partnership that emerged on the maidan stage in November 2004 captivated the Ukrainian public.
While Mr. Yushchenko won the public's support with an image of a contemplative and moderate politician, he lacked the dynamic presence on television and stage to motivate protesters and voters.
While Ms. Tymoshenko was a convincing, passionate leader, many Ukrainians viewed her as impulsive and radical and, therefore, dangerous in any high position of government.
Their sharply different personalities offset each other's weaknesses and compensated for the missing elements they each lacked. "They complemented each other well because they were so different," Mr. Lozowy said.
During the Orange Revolution's frost, Ms. Tymoshenko inspired the crowds with fiery speeches, leading them to march and protest at the Verkhovna Rada, the Presidential Secretariat and the Central Election Commission.
"He benefited from her in a passive way, taking it all in," Mr. Lozowy said. "Yushchenko couldn't have done what she did, literally stepping over the riot police in front of the Presidential Secretariat. But it's the kind of charisma that people like to see."
When the government began to buckle under the revolution's force, it was Mr. Yushchenko who performed the role of the rational, compromising negotiator with Mr. Kuchma and international mediators.
Mr. Yushchenko's ability to compromise is largely credited with preventing a Ukrainian civil war or a violent crackdown in Kyiv.
It also ended up reducing his power as president, as the constitutional changes he agreed to had shifted some of the balance of power to the prime minister.
At his inauguration ceremony, Mr. Yushchenko had yet to announce whether his first prime minister would be his close confidante and revolution financer Petro Poroshenko or the woman who inspired the troops and helped make it all possible.
It's now legend that the widespread cheers of "Yulia!" at the inauguration ceremony might have swayed his decision.
It's also legend that Mr. Yushchenko promised Ms. Tymoshenko the prime ministership at some point during the Orange Revolution.
But the president likely had far more tactical reasons, observers said.
Selecting a wealthy businessman such as Mr. Poroshenko in such a public, visible position as prime minister would have immediately set a negative tone for his presidency.
After all, Ukrainians were expecting Mr. Yushchenko would separate business from politics, as he had vowed during the revolution.
Unfortunately, the outcome didn't matter, experts said, since a nasty rivalry was already brewing. And any image that he was going to separate business from politics had no resemblance to the reality unfolding in the backstage of the Yushchenko government.
No honeymoon
It was no honeymoon between the two Orange Revolution leaders, even during the first days of their administration.
By the time Mr. Yushchenko announced on January 23, 2005, that Ms. Tymoshenko was his choice, she was already enmeshed in a conflict with Mr. Poroshenko that would directly lead to the Orange government's demise.
"Their antipathy for each other was evident immediately because they both wanted to be prime minister," said Stepan Khmara, an ally of Ms. Tymoshenko before he abandoned her political bloc in March 2005.
"During the government's formation, symptoms of distrust began within the team, which negatively affected their work. It was the basis for future conflicts," he said.
Whether it was the Poroshenko-Tymoshenko conflict or other factors, political experts agree in hindsight that the Yushchenko-Tymoshenko government was doomed from the start.
From the minute the new government began work, Mr. Poroshenko began plotting Ms. Tymoshenko's demise, Mr. Doniy said. "Poroshenko wanted power and, in this sense, he's similar to Yulia Tymoshenko."
By helping to place close ally Oleksander Tretiakov as Mr. Yushchenko's first aide, Mr. Poroshenko was able to control all the information the president was receiving about the performance of his Cabinet of Ministers, including Ms. Tymoshenko, Mr. Doniy said.
"In this fight, it was necessary to destroy the competitor, and that involved giving information to Yushchenko that this competitor doesn't support him and is attempting to take his place," Mr. Doniy explained.
Mr. Tretiakov became notorious for limiting access to the president to only a few who were closest to him.
As a result, Mr. Yushchenko and Ms. Tymoshenko weren't interacting with each other in their first months in government. Mr. Yushchenko's many weeks on foreign trips limited their contact even further.
"Yushchenko began receiving information that Tymoshenko sees herself as a princess of no lower weight than Yushchenko," Mr. Doniy said.
In fact, political insiders believe there was much truth to that, that Ms. Tymoshenko began plotting against Mr. Yushchenko since her first day as prime minister in an ambitious quest for power.
"Throughout, it appeared that she wanted to show herself as higher than the president and more competent," Mr. Khmara said. "Accordingly, she employed various techniques which would show more weakness in the president than the prime minister."
The Yushchenko-Tymoshenko government was destined to fail because they neglected to draw up a shared program of activities that specifically outlined goals and strategies, said Serhii Taran, chair of the Socio-Vymir Center for Sociological and Political Research, which is financed by Ukrainian private enterprises.
Power struggles and personality politics erupted, filling the vacuum where a plan was supposed to be in place, he said.
"Other than themselves, they couldn't offer anything," said Mr. Taran, who is a doctoral candidate in political science at Duke University in Durham, N.C. "They broke the authoritarian regime, but they couldn't propose anything new to the people. If there was a common strategy of action between them, that would have united them. The issue became distributing positions instead."
Within just two weeks of the new government taking the reins, the lack of a shared program was already apparent.
At a February 16 press conference, Prime Minister Tymoshenko said the government would review the legality of the privatizations of more than 3,000 enterprises. Her announcement came just days after President Yushchenko said only between 30 and 40 enterprises would fall under review.
"Nobody today can state the number of properties that will be returned to state ownership," Ms. Tymoshenko said.
Just the mention of the 3,000 figure sparked panic among Ukrainian and foreign investors alike, who were suddenly struck with the fear that their properties and investments would be seized by the government.
In subsequent public appearances, Ms. Tymoshenko insisted that her comment was blown out of proportion, as part of a smear campaign by her opponents.
Some political experts, however, don't doubt that she would have taken the re-privatization campaign to great lengths. "She was ready for massive, massive reviews, without a doubt," said Mr. Doniy, who is a Socialist Party member.
The statement was a mistake that would come back to haunt Ms. Tymoshenko whenever political opponents, including Mr. Yushchenko, attempted to discredit her, or paint her as a politician hostile to free markets and private property rights.
PART I
The ups and downs of Viktor and Yulia
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, October 8, 2006, No. 41, Vol. LXXIV
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