They have the potential of re-setting Ukraine on a pro-Russia or pro-West course. The key decisionmakers on March 31 will be President Viktor Yushchenko, the honorary head of the bloc and the voting delegates.
The convention offers President Yushchenko the opportunity to seize the moment and bring Ukraine back to the course it set during the Orange days. For this to happen, he must categorically decline to run again as a presidential candidate, a position he is now favoring. Declining is key to ensuring a united support for the other potential Orange contender, Yulia Tymoshenko. One candidate consolidates the Orange vote, two split it.
The prime minister’s Party of Regions is paying attention to the convention lead-up like a good watch-dog of Russia’s interests it is alleged to be. Therefore, recent support for Mr. Yushchenko’s next bid for the presidency by party spokesman Taras Chornovil must be viewed with alarm.
The president is drowning. Is he attempting a miraculous rescue by lately endorsing the rapprochement between Yulia Tymoshenko’s Byut and Our Ukraine? Are personal ambitions behind a new willingness to accept greater leadership of Our Ukraine at the convention and run again as a president? Such thinking is too naive.
There is more sinister play at work here. Surely, the man realizes that if he runs he will split the Orange vote and prevent it once again from holding power in Ukraine. As Machiavellian as it might seem, that may be the real reason for Yushchenko’s renewed interest in the presidency and the accompanying endorsement by the Party of Regions.
It looks very much like Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and his handlers are aiming to play the Yushchenko card against Tymoshenko once again. Many believe that the president cut a deal to keep her out of power in the past. If so, he’s been keeping his promise. He dismissed her twice as the prime minister. He denied the Orange forces their right to govern after the last parliamentary election in order to keep her out again.
She is not cowered. Since the betrayal of the Orange Revolution and the post-March elections shenanigans. she has rallied as the standard bearer for Ukraine’s pro-West democrats as their opposition leader in parliament. She fights Yanukovych and Russia for Ukraine’s control of the energy issue. There is a 98 percent approval for the cancellation of parliamentarians’ immunity, and calls for the separation of politics and business. She completed a successful visit to Washington aiming to convince the powerful friend not to lose sight of the seriousness of Ukraine’s fight for democracy.
There is no question the pro-Russia forces have no interest in seeing the resurrection of strong Orange forces in Ukraine with Tymoshenko as president. They mean to divide and conquer. Their strategy goes something like this: have Yushchenko run on behalf of the Orange forces against Tymoshenko and split the pro-West vote in favor of the third presidential candidate from the Regions, perhaps Yanukovych.
A recent poll reported by UNIAN, Ukraine’s press service, supports this. If all three ran for office now, Yanukovych would obtain about 26 percent of the vote, Tymoshenko about 16 percent and the president about 11 percent. The splitting of the Orange vote is critical to the Party of Regions and deadly to the Orange forces.
The Region handlers know that a union of the Orange blocs into a single political front would be a godsend to Ukraine’s confused Orange supporters. A unified Orange surge would give the country clear choices between pro-West and pro-Russia options; between democratization and a reversal; greater national independence or greater Russian supremacy over Ukraine.
The clear choice must emerge from the convention. They must answer some hard questions. Should they trust him after his betrayal of their Orange agenda? Should they destroy their party’s future by splitting a possible political Orange victory? Deny the pro-West voters of Ukraine a chance to rule by letting him run again? Or should they thank him, offer him an honorary title and give an Orange victory another chance by uniting behind Tymoshenko?
Our Ukraine delegates alone, not Machiavellian manipulators, can decide what they want Yushchenko to do. Given the political scenario of divide and conquer that is unfolding in Ukraine, the magnitude of the delegates’ decision rivals that of the Orange Revolution.
For Yushchenko the convention could be his moment of redemption, his chance to leave a noble legacy of a man who was poisoned for leading a freedom charge, won, but was duped by evil forces, only to come back to set the country on a path of greater prosperity for all. For this to happen, he must think of Ukraine and do the honorable thing. He must say that he will not, repeat, not be a candidate in the next presidential elections. Should he fail to do so, he will fall into the trap laid for him and drag any chances for victory for the pro-West Orange forces down with him.
So what will he choose to do?
If he is a man of the Orange Revolution, Yushchenko will strengthen the union among the Orange forces by choosing to leave politics after this presidential term ends. However, if he is a Russian pawn in the hands of the Party of Regions, he will declare his candidacy for the next presidential elections. Equally bad, he may equivocate, postpone his decision and play for time as he has done with disastrous consequences for the Orange coalition in the past.
Both his running or stalling must be prevented by the convention delegates.
At the end of the day they hold the power to accept or reject him as their leader, presidential candidate or both. That is the purpose of a convention.
If Yushchenko fails to agree to a clear and gracious exit after the current presidential term, the only acceptable choice for the convention will be to vote him out. The delegates must do this because it is the right thing to do. The prestige of the presidency, their party, and an Orange victory are more important than one failed man manipulated by the enemy.
Will they do it? Or is the enemy manipulating them as well?
Oksana Bashuk Hepburn is the President of U*CAN, a consulting company specializing in Ukraine since 1991. She is a frequent commentator on Ukraine’s political scene.
