A Year to Forget

By Volodymyr Kish

If you were living in Ukraine in 2009, it was a year you would be glad to see end.  The global financial crisis hit the country especially hard, sending its GDP into a tailspin, driving down the value of the Hryvnia, bankrupting a large number of companies, causing a significant number of Ukrainian banks to fail, sending unemployment spiralling, and impoverishing the country’s population even further.

To make things even worse, the political situation in the country degenerated into a farce.  It would not be an exaggeration to say that there was no government in Ukraine this past year. The country’s politicians proved completely incapable of dialogue, negotiation, compromise or providing even the basic minimum of governance. 

As if all that was not enough, fate and circumstance threw another damaging curve at the country’s long-suffering populace in the latter part of the year when the H1N1 Virus hit Ukraine with a vengeance.  At its peak, some 25 to 30 people a day were dying of its complications.  Needless to say, the government was caught completely unprepared.  The pandemic graphically demonstrated to what abysmal depths the country’s health system has deteriorated.

Presidential elections will take place in a few weeks, yet few are hopeful of anything much positive coming from them.  There are eighteen official candidates, though everyone knows that in reality, there are only two – Viktor Yanukovych and Yulia Tymoshenko.  The first round of voting will eliminate all the others, leaving these two to fight it out in the final round.

Most polls shows Yanukovych with a larger share of the popular vote than Tymoshenko, though neither has a clear majority.  Anyone familiar with the political environment in Ukraine though, knows that polls can be as easily bought as politicians.  What is real is the fact that Yanukovych will undoubtedly carry the Russified eastern and southern regions of Ukraine while Tymoshenko should carry Central Ukraine and a good chunk of the western region.  The interesting part will come in the second round, when Tymoshenko is confident she will be able to pick up the vast majority of the non-Yanukovych vote that went to other candidates in the first round.  There are many that feel that Yanukovych has a natural ceiling of around 35% to 40% of the popular vote that he cannot exceed.  The only way that he can beat Tymoshenko is if he is able to get most of his supporters out to vote, while Tymoshenko fails to get sufficient numbers of the other losing candidate’s supporters out to vote for her.  Sadly, that is a real possibility, since there are many disillusioned voters out there that have indicated that they may not participate in the elections at all.

Should Tymoshenko prevail, she will face some major challenges, not the least of which would come from the backlash from the Yanukovych camp which has indicated that it will not accept defeat either lightly or necessarily peacefully.  Unless she wins convincingly, she will also have great difficulty in forming a strong enough coalition that could govern any more effectively than this past joke of a parliament and government.  A key decision she will have to make early on is whether to accept the current status quo in terms of political and economic power, or whether to aggressively challenge corruption and get rid of the oligarchic class that currently controls the country.

As indicated earlier, she would also inherit a country that is perilously close to bankruptcy.  Her populist economic policies may resonate well with voters but would not be acceptable to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank or the European Union on whose finances Ukraine is becoming increasingly dependent.  To date, she has not demonstrated herself capable of effectively managing Ukraine’s economy and finances.

The alternative spectre of a Yanukovych victory is a dire one to contemplate.  It would certainly further divide the country along linguistic, cultural and geographic lines, and put the future of the country in its current form in doubt. 

As the Chinese saying goes, “we are living in interesting times”.