Chaos Again

By Walter Kish

The Ukrainian parliament, otherwise known as the Verkhovna Rada, returned from holidays the first week of September, and it did not take long for the bickering and silliness to resume.  Prime Minister Tymoshenko, in short order and with the support of Opposition Leader Victor Yanukovich and the Party of Regions, had a new bill passed in Parliament that further restricts the powers of President Victor Yushchenko. 

Not surprisingly, the President was not amused.  Calling it a “constitutional coup d’etat” he mounted a vitriolic media attack on Tymoshenko, accusing her of treason for siding with the Russian sympathisers in the Party of Regions, particularly in the aftermath of the recent Russian shenanigans in Georgia.  He followed up on this claim by having the Prosecutor’s Office call her in for questioning. 

This type of intimidating tactics, a common practice when Kuchma or Yanukovich ruled the roost, does nothing for President Yushchenko’s ever dwindling reputation.  It was really not that long ago that Yushchenko himself was trying to engineer a governing coalition with this same Party of Regions, which he tried to sell at the time as an act of non-partisan statesmanship.  So we are now being asked to believe that when he tries to ally himself with the Regions folks, it is an act of statesmanship, but when Yulia does it, it is an act of treason.  Such is the sorry state of Ukrainian politics.

To add insult to injury, as all this was happening and undoubtedly as a direct result of it, the governing coalition in parliament consisting of an uneasy alliance between the President’s OU/PSD faction and the Tymoshenko Bloc fell apart, throwing Ukraine once again into political chaos.  If a new coalition is not formed within the next week or two, Yushchenko is threatening to call another election. 

All of this of course, is simply jockeying for position in preparation for the next Presidential Elections.  President Yushchenko still harbours aspirations of getting re-elected, a proposition as likely to happen as Vladimir Putin winning a popularity contest in Georgia.  Despite the latest polls showing Yushchenko’s popularity being in the single digits and falling, he is strangely oblivious to the fact that he long ago stopped being a solution to Ukraine’s many problems and has become a major problem himself.

Of course, a new election will solve very little.  All indications show that Tymoshenko would increase both her popular support and number of seats in parliament, Yanukovich and the Regions would likely hold their own, while the biggest loser would be whatever remains of the pro-Presidential OU/PSD or the newly formed United Centre Party.  The long-suffering Ukrainian electorate in the meantime is forced to suffer in continuous frustration over the inability of the Ukrainian nationalist and reformist forces to form a viable coalition government.

This farcical state of affairs is rapidly becoming dangerous in the face of Russia’s no longer covert ambitions to regain control over her former colonies.  Her incursion into Georgia last month finds ominous parallels to the Nazi’s taking over The Sudetenland in the preliminaries to WWII. 

Ukraine can no longer afford the luxury of blundering her way to eventual democratic, fair and responsible government a generation or two from now.  Current events and global geopolitical realities require strong, determined and united leadership in the face of an increasingly restive northern neighbour. 

It behoves Yushchenko, Tymoshenko, Lutsenko and all the other so called “leaders” that claim to represent the best interests of Ukraine at heart, to set aside their narrow petty differences and fragile egos and show Russia and the World, that when threatened, they can pull together in a united front to ensure the continuing existence of a truly free Ukraine.  Failure to do so will only further encourage the “Russian Bear” to prepare for its next meal.