It seemed a longshot topper for a holiday wish list. During President Leonid Kuchma's trip to the eastern city of Luhansk at the end of 1997, anonymous 'citizens' pleaded with the head of state to 'bring order' to the country by introducing a state of emergency, Ukrainian media reported. Kuchma pointedly did not dismiss the request. Instead, he used the meeting to lash out at the perks enjoyed by members of Parliament, threatening to make them the subject of a nationwide referendum.
A few days earlier, Kuchma said he might dismiss the Parliament due to be elected March 29 if deputies try to undermine his reforms or if a new election law is found to be unconstitutional.
The reply was not long in coming. Ukraine is governed by a 'banditocracy … which flouts the interests of the state and the citizen,' Parliament Speaker Oleksandr Moroz said this week.
Moroz has in the past said a state of emergency is possible. The threat of one has also been taken seriously by the local media, at least to the degree that such speculation has helped fill news space during the slow holiday season.
'In a country with a fragile democracy, a scenario can go as follows. First someone addresses the people and points a guilty finger in the right direction. Then the army (or special services) starts moving in the indicated direction. Airports are then shut down, and those guilty punished,' the newspaper Den warned on Dec. 24.
Does Ukraine stand on the threshold of a constitutional crisis as its deeply unpopular president and equally distrusted lawmakers go for each other's throats? Are ordinary people really clamoring for martial law? Think again. Den wasted little time debunking its own coup prognosis. 'All this resembles a hot, tropical country with a charismatic leader. However it's too cold in Ukraine, and we do not see any charisma here,' the story concluded. Those citizens in Luhansk may not, in fact, be all that ordinary. 'The times are not yet past when the president is followed in his travels by buses filled with people expressing prearranged opinions,' said Serhy Odarych, director of Ukrainska Perspektyva think tank. Odarych and other political analysts said talk about a state of emergency and the dismissal of Parliament amounts to little more than bluster by a president miffed at the rhetoric of opponents running in the parliamentary election.
'Such talk is the result of the growing strength of various political forces, especially opposition ones. This is first of all a reaction of a human being, not the guarantor of the Constitution,' said Oleksandr Barabash, constitutional expert at the Parliamentary Development Project, a program financed by the United States Agency for International Development.
As political infighting intensified in recent months, government law enforcement agencies have launched several criminal investigations of opposition leaders, specifically ex-premier Pavlo Lazarenko and Yulia Tymoshenko of the Hromada party. But dismissing Parliament would be a whole lot tougher.
Ukraine's new constitution permits the dismissal of the legislature only if it fails to meet for 30 days during an ongoing session. And Parliament is automatically called into session within two days of the declaration of a state of emergency or martial law.
The constitution is, on the other hand, crystal clear on the procedure for impeaching the president. On the two previous occasions when Kuchma has threatened to dismiss Parliament, lawmakers have wasted no time warning that they would launch impeachment proceedings if he tried to make good on that threat.
For the time being, political observers believe neither side wants to play for such high stakes. 'There are no indicators that the conflict between the branches of power is dangerous, and can get as bad as the dismissal of Parliament,' said Dmitry Koublitsky, director of post-Soviet studies at the Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research.
Presidential Administration officials have also tried lately to downplay the tough talk.
'Why are you pushing me to say that there will be a state of emergency?' National Security Council Secretary Volodymyr Horbulin said in response to a reporter's question at a press conference last week.
'I think – and I have seen it happen again and again – that a compromise can be found with every deputy, and every faction.'
Barabash said popular resentment of Parliament is running high, as is support for dismissing the ineffectual legislature.
'It's a normal reaction of hungry people when they are told all the time about high pensions Parliament members had voted themselves,' he said.
But then Kuchma's popular standing is no better than that of his foes in the Rada. Few of his constituents care about any state of emergency other than the one that has long governed their family budget.
