Following Ukraine’s hotly contested, internationally acclaimed presidential election earlier this month, the country now finds itself at a crossroads in its young democratic history. It appears that a critical mass has finally been reached among the country’s main political forces in support of far-reaching economic and institutional reforms, first of all in the bloated energy and public utilities sectors.
The main question today is whether these ambitious reforms can be initiated by the current convocation of the Ukrainian Parliament, and if so, what the makeup will be of the government that leads them. Alternatively, in case of a continuing impasse over coalition negotiations, Ukraine could roll the dice and hold early Parliamentary elections, with the most likely date in early autumn of this year (the next regularly-scheduled Parliamentary election is not due until late 2012).
Although avoiding a new election via a grand coalition of president-elect Victor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions with the Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko (BYuT) would appear to be the simplest option, a cohabitation of Tymoshenko as Prime Minister under President Yanukovych is clearly a recipe for continued government paralysis. With BYuT unlikely to agree to a compromise prime minister candidate, the Party of Regions needs the support of the Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense faction to move forward.
But here’s the rub: Our Ukraine’s 72-member faction disintegrated into several competing groups in the autumn of 2008, with one main group aligning with Tymoshenko’s political force, another staying with [now outgoing President] Victor Yushchenko, and a third supporting neither.
Today, the faction can neither confirm its participation in the current coalition with BYuT, nor muster enough votes to join any new coalition (the former circumstance provides legal grounds for Ukraine’s president to dissolve Parliament). Our Ukraine-Self defense bloc, originally built around Yushchenko, has de facto ceased to exist, and this is the major roadblock to building a pro-reform coalition in Parliament today.
The argument against dissolution of the current Parliament is an obvious one: with an exhausting two-round presidential election already on the books in 2010, piling a Parliamentary election on top of this could result in voter fatigue, with negative consequences for the prestige and quality of democracy.
However, electing a new Parliament also offers a compelling upside: There has has been a fundamental re-formatting of Ukraine’s political landscape since the last election in 2007, and a newly chosen Parliament would far more closely reflect the current realities of Ukrainian politics – making the formation of stable governing coalition much more achievable.
The tenuous Orange alliance between Tymoshenko and Yushchenko went up in smoke in 2008, weakening both sides and making each dependent on support from the then-opposition Party of Regionsto advance their agendas.
For its part, the PoR, villainized as anti-reform and anti-Western following the 2004 election, has managed to partially re-cast its dour, apparatchik image – at least in the eyes of the international community, if not with voters in western regions of Ukraine.
This re-casting has been aided and personified by the rise of several young, progressive-leaning figures in the Party of Regionshierarchy, such as hard-nosed economist Iryna Akimova and 39-year-old party spokesman and MP Yuriy Miroshnychenko. (Miroshnychenko’s brilliance in playing the "good cop" conciliatory role opposite the "attack dog" persona of his Party of Regions colleague Hanna Herman was one of the fascinating subtexts of the presidential campaign).
Further, two promising young reformist politicians, Sergiy Tigipko and Arseniy Yatseniuk, emerged as major players during the recent campaign. If elections are held this year, Tigipko’s and Yatseniuk’s parties can be expected to take seats away from BYuT and Regions, answering the desire of Ukraine’s voters to see a change in the faces of their government. Both Tigipko and Yatseniuk are considered (along with former Finance Minister and Party of Regions deputy leader Mykola Azarov) to be leading candidates for the prime minister’s job, if it is vacated by Tymoshenko.
Crucially, a new election would get rid of the phantom Our Ukraine faction, which is causing most of the chaos today in the coalition-forming process. Of course, many of the its deputies would re-appear in the next Parliament, but under a more manageable configuration reflecting something closer to their true loyalties.
A new election would also likely result in the demise of the Lytvyn Bloc, an ideologically amorphous, so-called "centrist" faction whose MPs have used their position holding the balance of power since 2007 to rent themselves out to the highest bidder.
There can be little doubt that Yulia Tymoshenko’s refusal to recognize her presidential election defeat has caused significant damage to her image in Western capitals. But a far more important question at the moment is how Tymoshenko’s decision to contest the election result affected her party’sstanding with Ukraine’s voters. A Parliamentary election would allow the voters to pass direct judgement – for better or for worse- on Tymoshenko’sstrategy to keep fighting rather than concede and congratulateher opponent, as is the acceptednorm in modern democracies.
Parliament, in a move heavily criticized by Tigipko as well as by the non-partisan Committee of Voters of Ukraine, last week voted to cancel local elections all overthe countrythat had been scheduled for May 30, without setting areplacement date.Both the Party of Regionsand ByuT have suggested that these elections could be delayed by almost a year, until the spring of 2011.
However,rescheduling the local electionsfor the autumn of 2010would provide a golden opportunity to hold a simultaneous Parliamentary election, saving hundreds of millions of dollars in administrative costs and sparing Ukraine’s weary voters an additional trip to the polls.
If the members of Our Ukraine cannot agree on creating a firm coalition with the Party of Regions, and if the unlikely option of BYuT participation in a coalition under a new prime minister does not pan out, the country will be faced with yet another political crisis at a time when ordinary, law-abiding Ukrainian citizens can least afford it.
None of the current MPs want to give up their seats (many seats were purchased from central party organizations for large sums of cash), and the Party of Regions itself has a major disincentive against holding a new Parliamentary election: some of its own MPs will surely have to be sacrificed. But these vested interests inside the Party of Regionsare working against the broader interests of the party, not to mention Ukraine as a whole, and there are increasing signs that the Party of Regions leadership is prepared to take the plunge if necessary.
Speakinglast week on "Big-Time Politics", the television talk show hosted by Russian emigre journalist Yevgeniy Kiselev, Regions deputy Oleksandr Lavrynovich issued a stark warningagainst furtherdithering by the Our Ukraine faction. "If autumn arrives and there is still no new coalition in Parliament, we won’t be talking any longer about creating such a coalition. Instead, we will be busy counting up the votes of the new Parliamentary election which we have just finished holding," said Lavrynovich, a soft-spoken but resolute veteran of nearly two decades of Ukrainian political battles.
It would be a tragedy if this window of opportunity to implement critical energy sector and public utilities reforms ends up being missed on account of a tug-of-war between various factions and sub-factions over petty demands.
If a pro-reform government led by a capable prime minister is notin placeby theend of March,President Yanukovichand the Party of Regionswill have an immediate chance to deliver on their campaign slogan of "change" – by shaking up the established order and calling a pre-term election to the Ukrainian Parliament.
Will Ritter is a former managing editor of the Kyiv-based IntelNews information agency. He can be reached at [email protected]
