Political Depression

 
By Walter Kish

In the aftermath of the fall of the first “Orange” government, and the unexpected alliance between Yushchenko and his former archenemy Yanukovych, many Ukrainians are suffering a severe case of political disillusionment and depression. The majority of local reformist political experts as well as diaspora analysts are grappling to make sense of the situation and find any possible justification for it. Whether I read the local press or one of the plethora of foreign newsletters or other publications, bewilderment has been the most common reaction. 

Did Yushchenko really have to cut a deal with Yanukovych and, even worse, sacrifice what appear to be many of the basic principles of the Orange Revolution? Is he really going to amnesty all those who committed election fraud last fall?  Is he really going to let the majority of the corrupt privatizations of recent years stand? Is he really going to forgive and forget those who ordered the murder of Gongadze, and who tried to assassinate him?  To the average Ivan or Natalka in Lviv, or Dnipropetrovsk, or Odessa, or Kyiv, who stood on the Maidan last November, none of this is comprehensible, and the emotional reaction has been deep and depressing. On a trip to Lviv this past week, most of the erstwhile politically vocal contacts I have did not even want to talk about what has happened.  It is just too painful for them.

A good friend of mine who is quite an astute observer of the Ukrainian political scene tried to reassure me that the wording of the agreement with Yanukovych is so vague that Yushchenko didn’t really cede any substantial gains to the opposition. Unfortunately, the President is not rushing to clarify what he actually did commit to.

By remaining silent on the specifics and rationale behind his agreement with Yanukovych, Yushchenko is aggravating an already disquieted public. If the crisis of government was of such magnitude that desperate steps were required, then he should be front and centre in the media, explaining to the Ukrainian people what it all means, and reassuring them that Ukraine has not gone back to the “business as usual” that prevailed under Kuchma. He should be making it clear that only the constitution determines who is prosecuted in this country, and not some arbitrary backroom deal of political convenience.

In any case, the Ukrainian people certainly do not seem to be buying it. The last major poll asking Ukrainians who they would vote for gives 20.7% to Yanukovich’s Regions party, 20.5% to Tymoshenko’s bloc and only 13.9% to Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine party.  This past week, one of the deputies in parliament for the Our Ukraine party, Olena Bondarenko, defected to the Tymoshenko Bloc, claiming that the party is being taken over by “business interests.”  Speculation is rife that many more deputies will leave in the coming weeks.

There are, of course, various groups of people who have looked upon what has transpired as a positive development, claiming that the former coalition government was dysfunctional. This is true. Primary among such supporters has been the business community that now feels that the new government will prove to be more stable and effective, thereby resulting in an improved investment climate and stable economic growth.

They may be right; but then, improving the investment climate wasn’t exactly the foremost priority of all those hundreds of thousands of people on the Maidan last fall.  Further, the real issue is not whether a change in government was necessary. It undoubtedly was. The real problem is that many people feel that the cure went far beyond the critical symptoms and has introduced more than minor stomach upset in side effects. Better options were arguably available. What has been sacrificed more than anything else is the people’s faith in Yushchenko as a leader.