Sure, she’s tough, but can she win this time around?
Yulia Tymoshenko
Age: 49
Hometown: Dnipropetrovsk
Education: Dnipropetrovsk State University (1984)
Career: Energy trader, politician
Political posts: Deputy prime minister (2000-01), Fatherland (Batkivshchyna) Party leader, prime minister (2005-06, 2007-present)
Campaign slogan: “Ukraine will win!”
Family status: Married, one child
Famous quote: “Who told you people don’t want dictatorship?”
LUHANSK, Ukraine – She has been the “gas princess” and the “Orange princess,” but can Yulia Tymoshenko become Ukraine’s next president?
Trailing Party of Regions leader Victor Yanukovych in pre-election polls by 10 or more percentage points, Tymoshenko has been using every weapon she can think of to close the considerable gap. She promises a bright (and European) future for Ukraine. She blames her opponents for the country’s economic and political crises. She lavishly spreads government (and non-government) resources.
Her aggressive campaign style was on display in mid-December when the Kyiv Post followed Tymoshenko on the campaign trail to Luhansk Oblast in eastern Ukraine, where she met with miners, handed out keys to apartments and appeared at an Ani Lorak concert.
The cornerstone of Tymoshenko’s campaign has been her carefully formed image as a fighter for the Ukrainian people against corrupt and criminal interests represented by her opponents, Yanukovych and President Victor Yushchenko.
In a speech to miners in Luhansk, she blasted top politicians, their oligarch backers and corrupt state officials for exacerbating the economic crisis by transferring misappropriated funds to offshore accounts.
Tymoshenko has a history of conflicts with big business.
Herself a key player in the murky Russia-Ukraine gas trade in the 1990s, she clashed with gas trade moguls while working as deputy prime minister for energy from 1999 to 2001. In February 2001, she was arrested on charges of gas smuggling, tax fraud and forgery of documents, in what she claims was a move to stop her from rooting out corruption.
After becoming prime minister in 2005 in the wake of the Orange Revolution, she threatened to renationalize privatized companies. In January 2009, Tymoshenko moved to cut out gas-trade intermediary RosUkrEnergo, widely seen as a part of a corrupt scheme, from the Russia-Ukraine trade. And she didn’t stop talking about it throughout the year. This, she says, is evidence of her commitment to clean up Ukrainian business.
She told assembled coal miners that Yanukovych and his “criminal backers” should not be allowed back into power, as they would “again try to gain control over state resources.”
Critics say that her portrayal of herself as whiter than white, in contrast to “dirty” opponents, is disingenuous, given Tymoshenko’s past as a key player in the murky gas trade in the 1990s and connections with ex-Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, her patron who was convicted in the United States in 2006 on money-laundering charges. “Where does the prime minister get the millions of hryvnias for her [campaign] advertisements, a person without a flat, a piece of land or a car? A tramp!” said Yushchenko in November, referring to her declaration of assets in the election campaign. She also has her own links with big business – in her entourage in Luhansk were multi-millionaire supporters Kostyantyn Zhevago and Serhiy Taruta.
Tymoshenko’s calls for strict control and a strong leader, alongside her aggressive rhetoric, have led to concerns that she will take an authoritarian grip on the country if elected. But activists say they are ready to oppose any such moves.
“It can’t happen as people in civil society are prepared for this,” said Dmytro Potekhin, a political analyst and civil society activist.
A number of observers have likened her approach to the Bolshevik method of identifying “enemies of the people” responsible for the country’s problems. Her billboard campaign has sought to identify her with Ukraine by declaring: “She is working. She is Ukraine.” By implication, other candidates are working against her and the nation.
“She always finds someone else to blame,” Potekhin said.
Nowhere is this more evident than the economy. Despite being in charge of the Ukrainian economy as it nosedived in the fall of 2008, she has put the blame on other politicians for obstructing her work and colluding with big business to enrich themselves.
Some give her credit for shepherding the economy through a desperate year. But others point to the cost – the government has taken on more than $11 billion in debts to the International Monetary Fund, the last gas payment to Russia was made from central bank reserves, taxes have been demanded in advance and companies are waiting for huge unpaid value-added tax refunds.
During the trip to Luhansk, she predicted economic recovery – if only she would be elected president. She fixed March as the date of the end of the crisis and also forecast that the hryvnia will claw its way back to six to the dollar, much stronger than the current eight. This is the same woman, however, who denied the country was heading for economic crisis only days before it hit in 2008.
Experts also note that she has presented no concrete economic program to back up her promises.
“The question is whether she can take unpopular decisions,” said Yevhen Bystrytskiy, executive director of the International Renaissance Foundation.
Tymoshenko refutes accusations that she is a populist, which is almost a dirty word in Ukrainian politics. Her premiership has included policies that returned hundreds of millions of dollars to bank depositors whose money disappeared when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
In recent months, Tymoshenko has tried to bury the populist label by accusing her rivals – Yanukovych and Yushchenko – of the same, in agreeing to pass a bill that raises minimum wages and pensions beyond the government’s fiscal capacity. She, however, obstinately refused to cut the budget this year, despite a plunge in tax revenues. She even raised wages for certain state workers in November.
There has been no shortage of allegations that Tymoshenko has blurred her roles as prime minister and presidential candidate, in effect “buying” votes using government resources at her disposal. At a meeting with chemical industry workers in Alchevsk, a bleak steelmaking town in Luhansk Oblast, she handed out keys to apartments bought by the state. She has also handed out deeds to state land across the country.
Her campaign spending has also been liberal. She has blanketed the nation with billboards, television advertisements, free calendars featuring Tymoshenko with a white tiger cub and rock-star concerts.
Billboards display Ukrainian pop stars declaring: “Yulia Tymoshenko is my president.” A New Year’s concert on Independence Square featured a performance by a number of these, along with a speech from Tymoshenko. In Alchevsk, Ani Lorak gave a concert to crowds of supporters, interrupted only by a brief appearance by Tymoshenko.
But despite the large-scale campaign, and her reputation as an excellent communicator, Tymoshenko has not gained ground on Yanukovych in polls during the campaign. Yuriy Yakymenko, head of policy research at the Razumkov Center think tank, said she has struggled because the government has been an easy target for attacks from Yanukovych during the crisis.
Nevertheless, she’s expected to give Yanukovych a tight race in the runoff on Feb. 7. She has called on all democratic forces among the defeated presidential candidates to unite behind her in the expected second-round showdown.
“Yanukovych has the advantage in the first round. But, from past experience, it is likely Tymoshenko will be able to concentrate more voters from the forces who vote for other candidates in the first round, or those who have not yet decided to vote yet,” said Yakymenko. “If she succeeds in getting voters out, she will win.”
Kyiv Post staff writer James Marson can be reached at [email protected].
