After the Feb. 16 confidence motion in the cabinet of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, two smaller coalition parties, ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna Party and Samopomich Party left the coalition, leaving it short of a majority.
The populist Radical Party of Oleh Lyashko subsequently indicated its intention to re-join the coalition, but the two main parties still in the coalition, President Petro Poroshenko’s Solidarity Party and Yatsenyuk’s Peoples’ Front seem reluctant to formally reconstitute the ruling coalition – perhaps therein they are mindful of the presence of significant dissenters within Poroshenko’s own party, so in effect they still might struggle to hold a majority.
Indeed, on paper they might still be a dozen or so votes short.
The strategy for Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk might be to struggle along, perhaps being maintained in power by tacit support from independent and opposition deputies, close to the oligarchic groups of Akhmetov and Kolomoisky. Obviously such a coalition might struggle to survive and to consistently roll out a reform agenda.
The fact that such a coalition was also only being maintained by the support of oligarchic groups leaves Yatseniuk/Poroshenko open to criticism that they are in the hands of oligarchs (well Poroshenko is one himself). The question will be what trade-offs and backroom deals were already done – indeed Kolomoisky appears to have met with Poroshenko and Yatseniuk prior to the February 16 vote, and his deputies helped to save Yatseniuk.
The other factor perhaps weighing on both Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk’s minds is the March 3 meeting of the Normandy format foreign ministers group of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany, in Paris.
French and German foreign ministers visited Kyiv this week, presumably to test the lay of the land before the meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
The messaging was that both France and Germany will press Ukraine and Russia for greater steps towards Minsk II implementation and for Ukraine that means putting the issue of constitutional reform back on the agenda – and before autumn, as was suggested when the existing draft constitutional reform bill was put on the back burner earlier in the year.
For Poroshenko-Yatsenyuk that now looks like a terminal scenario for an already weak coalition, as they likely now lack even a simple majority, let alone the two-thirds constitutional majority to get it signed off.
The question is will the French-German sides be willing to push the ruling coalition over the edge, and risk early parliamentary elections with an uncertain outlook, for the sake of trying to force through (and likely failing) the constitutional reform package. I have my doubts.
Poroshenko might just though link constitutional reform to meet the demands of Western donors, with early parliamentary elections later in the year.
The problem is that any new constitutional draft which gives greater autonomy to the regions, and smacks of a sop to Russia will likely be voted down by the population – and recent opinion polls still show majority support for European Union accession despite the weak state of domestic politics, and the pain imparted on the population by pro-Western reform policies.
Opinion polls though do not favor the early election outcome for Poroshenko or Yatsenyuk.
A recent Kyiv International Institute of Sociology poll in the Kyiv Post showed support for Poroshenko’s Solidarity Party down at 16.6 percent, from 21.8 percent in the October 2014 elections, and support for Yatsenyuk’s Peoples’ Front down at 2.5 percent from 22.11 percent in October 2014.
Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna Party polls second on 15.1 percent (up from 5.7 percent in October 2014), the Opposition Bloc third with 14.2 percent (up from 9.4 percent in October 2014), Samopomich Party with 11.8 percent (up from 11 percent in October), and Lyashko’s Radical Party also up at 10.3 percent from just 7.4 percent in October 2014.
Two other parties, Svoboda (nationalist on 6.2 percent) and Civil Position (pro-Western reform on 5.3 percent) would secure parliamentary representation. From these polls it might be difficult to construct a durable pro-reform coalition.
Note that there has been some flux in opinion polls recently, albeit they all show the collapse in support for Yatsenyuk, and the sharp decline in support for Poroshenko.
It is difficult at this stage seeing either as particularly favoring early elections.
Recent polls also show strong personal support for former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, and has spoken about creating his own social/political movement which could morph into a party which could likely do well in the polls given that personally he is rating around the 25 percent level. Saakashvili could be a game changer in terms of forming a pro-Western reform administration, albeit obviously Saakashvili has his detractors in Moscow, and also in some Western capitals.
The optimal outcome for Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk at this stage likely will be to try and use to the weak state of domestic politics to deflect calls for constitutional reform from Western creditors, and to try and cobble a new coalition together with the support of oligarchic interests in the existing Rada, thereby avoiding early elections.
Ukraine’s Western backers are at this stage probably in two (even more) minds about how to further support the reform efforts in Ukraine. There is clearly extreme frustration with Ukraine’s political elites, and their almost perennial tendency to self-destruct, plus also concern over foot-dragging over rule of law related issues – as reflected in the resignation of a string of ministers/officials now, including most recently Economy Minister Aivaras Abromovicius and Deputy Prosecutor General Vitaliy Kasko.
But the question is what would early elections achieve?
As noted above they offer an uncertain outcome – they can go either of a number of ways as reflected in the poll data above. An election campaign would also put reforms on hold and risk an unwind in the hard-won macroeconomic stabilization, and potentially blowing a hole in the International Monetary Fund lending program.
Still likely the Western approach is to try and get the current coalition cobbled back together, encouraging Poroshenko to retain/augment the team of technocrats, and the assumption that the alliance between Western creditors, and strong Maidan civil society that enough reform momentum can be maintained to transform the Ukrainian economy to a position where reforms reach a critical mass and cannot be reversed.
It is also perhaps true to say that there is now a substantial amount of “Ukraine fatigue” amongst the Western creditor base – particularly with the constant squabbling amongst Ukraine’s political elites, and when set also against the huge broader challenges facing the West in Syria, managing an aggressive and expansionist Russia, and with EU integration (or disintegration threatened by Brexit). There is hence a tendency to perhaps try and kick the Ukrainian can down the road which could shape strategy towards Ukraine.
For me though the one indicator to watch on the Ukraine story is the hryvnia – as the weaker the currency, the likely the less sustainable is the IMF in terms of its financing assumptions. And the hryvnia likely continues to weaken until a new coalition is formed, and the next IMF tranche signed off by the IMF board – unlikely until a new coalition government is agreed in Ukraine.
