On the Importance of Being Candid

Mykola Riabchuk

Dmytro Potekhin, an activist of the youth movement that played an important role during the Orange Revolution, has recently circulated a number of questions that may look rhetorical at first glance but, like the childish questions of Voltaire’s Candide, they deserve serious consideration.

“Isn’t it strange”, he wrote, “that in a country where
1) the government is not legitimate since it was formed by unconstitutional majority;
2) the parliament is not legitimate since the majority did not result from a revote nor was it dissolved and reelected;
3) the court system is not legitimate since it operates under the new ‘law’ passed by the ‘parliament’;
4) the ‘president’ is not legitimate since he has done nothing either with the ‘parliament’ or with the ‘government’ to reestablish constitutional rule,
- the key human rights activists are complaining that the ‘minister’ of interior is not gathering the public council to hear about human rights abuses, while saying nothing about the unconstitutional nature of the whole situation;
- the key freedom movement is ‘against censorship’, while its activists – journalists keep calling all these people who took over the institutions ‘president’, ‘prime minister’, ‘minister’ projecting their legitimacy;
- the bloggers wonder why the security service is removing posts from their blogs, but still call it Security Service of Ukraine, not Security Service of Usurpers;
- the businesses are complaining that the taxes are too high, while they are taken by a bunch of organized people who in the early 90s were called racketeers;
- the opposition is going to take part in the elections under the ‘law’ passed by a bunch of MPs still calling themselves deputies, none of whom get out of this fake Verhovna Rada […]
People, what are we talking about?!”*

To put it simply, why has a de-facto parliamentary coup d’etat and eventual usurpation of power by a minority clique been tacitly accepted by both the political opposition and society at large?

There are many answers that largely explain, albeit not justify, the odd situation.

First, the dubious takeover of power was approved by the Constitutional Court – even though the same Court a year and a half ago passed the opposite decision on a similar issue. Actually, the credibility of the Court was undermined long ago, in 2003, when the constitutional pundits recognized that Leonid Kuchma could run for presidency for the third time because his first term did not count – he had served it arguably under the old constitution. The Orange leaders put much more efforts into subduing the Court than making it really efficient and independent. Society never voiced strong concerns about this – and now we all are duly punished for our passivity and opportunism.

Secondly, the coup d’etat was accepted by Western governments with a benign neglect that placed the Ukrainian opposition in an odd situation: they had to deny the legitimacy of the government whose validity, in fact, was recognized (or at least not questioned) internationally.

And thirdly, the misrule of the Orange leaders has discredited not only them – as today’s opposition, but democracy in general. This boosted the attractiveness of the authoritarian alternative within one part of the society, and frustrated, demoralized, and alienated the other part, hindering its ability to resist. In such a situation, a minority party with sufficient resources and determination can easily capture the state – as happened in Italy or Germany long ago, and more recently in Russia.

So, I would say that the legitimacy of the Ukrainian government is recognized by default – simply because there is no other government (since Tymoshenko unexpectedly easily stepped down in March, passing authority to the usurpers), nor is there any viable alternative (since the opposition is still in disarray, and society either frustrated with everything or still trustful in the new duce).

In this regard, David Marples is probably right when questioning Alexander Motyl’s prediction of the imminent collapse of the Yanukovych presidency in Ukraine – probably by the year 2012 (Edmonton Journal, Aug. 9, 2010). It looks really overoptimistic – but not because of “perceptible economic recovery and increasing popularity of the Yanukovych leadership”, as Dr. Marples suggests. Neither “recovery” nor “popularity” are actually viable. The former is mostly connected to the post-crisis recovery of the entire world economy and to a very low base for comparison. The latter is related to the ‘honeymoon’ period of Yanukovych’s presidency and still high expectations of his electorate (actually, Yushchenko’s popularity at the time was even higher but has since fallen dramatically). So far, there are no economic reforms in sight to secure sustainable growth. And austerity measures designed to support this growth do not target officials or friendly oligarchs, so would hardly sustain the president’s popularity in the near future.

Motyl might be wrong for another reason. He expects that the 2012 parliamentary and 2015 presidential elections will be free and fair – as they used to be within the past five years. Not necessarily. Given the pace and direction of political and legal “reforms” introduced by the new regime, we may have Russia-style ‘managed democracy’ in Ukraine very soon. Actually, the local elections this Fall will provide a good litmus test for Ukraine’s democratic procedures and institutions. So far, the changes of the electoral law rubber-stamped by the parliament to advantage the ruling party a few months before the elections do not evoke much optimism. They introduced a number of retroactive requirements that should have been abolished by any impartial court if it happened to exist in Ukraine. And they confirmed once again the strong intention of the government to play with rules rather than play by rules.

So now might be a proper time to come back to the candid questions raised by Dmytro Potekhin and to remind the king and his court that they are naked. They got some carte-blanche, however dubious, to introduce law and order and much needed reforms. But instead, they bring even more lawlessness and disorder, and introduced very peculiar “reforms” that satisfy mostly their oligarchic friends and Moscow patrons. For the beginning, I suggest to mention, wherever possible, their titles and positions within the quotation marks or with the words “so called”.

Potekhin is right – we do not have a legitimate government, legitimate parliament, legitimate Court. We have people who call themselves “ministers”, “deputies”, and “judges”. Let them do it. But we should not accept their claims at face value.

*Potekhin’s text has been modified slightly for grammatical reasons. DRM

Ukrainian Leader puts Economic Recovery Ahead of Democracy

David Marples

Anti-national measures and attacks on democracy have become a feature of the new presidency of Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine.

In July 2010, in an article entitled “The New Political Regime in Ukraine: Toward Sultanism Yanukovych-Style?” American political scientist Alexander J. Motyl predicts the imminent collapse of the Yanukovych presidency in Ukraine. The new leader, he writes, is a figure of ridicule and will either fail to initiate reforms, leading to a new economic crisis, or else he might initiate them but undermine his own power base in the Sovietized Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.

Motyl’s conclusions appear premature. Indeed what is happening in Ukraine currently is less “Sultanism” than a gradual takeover by a determined, if not ruthless political force—the Regions Party—combined with perceptible economic recovery and increasing popularity of the Yanukovych leadership. This popularity has been generated in part by the introduction of a semblance of order into a situation that appeared earlier to be one of total chaos.

How has this occurred and what does it mean for the future of Ukraine?

In the first place, the Yanukovych team has extricated itself from many of the commitments of the president’s predecessor, Viktor Yushchenko. Ukraine no longer seeks to join NATO and has declared itself to be neutral and non-aligned.

It has blatantly favored the Moscow Patriarchate of the Orthodox Church, which has 9 million members, far less than the Kyiv Patriarchate.

In other areas, it has improved relations with Russia and ended the “gas war,” but without committing itself to the CSTO or Russian ambitions for the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Conversely, Ukraine in the long-term remains hopeful of attaining membership of the European Union, a move that has the support of Donetsk steel magnate Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man and a key member of the Regions team.

The Yanukovych Cabinet, heavily weighted in favor of his home region, Donetsk, contains its share of Neanderthals. Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov (nee Pakhlo), a native of Kaluga, Russia, who moved to Donetsk in 1984, elected not to appoint a single woman to his Cabinet. Minister of the Interior, Anatoly Mohylyov, has boosted the powers of the police and abolished the Department for the Monitoring of Human Rights. Education Minister, Dmytro Tabachnyk, a historian, is an advocate of Russian-language rights in Ukraine.

The opposition meanwhile is subdued and divided. The Regions Party has the support of about 265 deputies in the 450-member parliament, based on its alliance with the bloc of Speaker, Volodymyr Lytvyn. It engineered this majority by a combination of bribery and persuasion to entice individual MPs and former members of other factions to join with Regions.

The government has largely taken over the media and only a handful of outlets now offer serious criticism of the new leadership. It has revamped Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, which has begun to monitor real and potential oppositionists at a level not seen since the days of Leonid Kuchma (president from 1994 to 2004).

Yulia Tymoshenko, the opposition leader, is badly discredited, largely a result of the economic implosion that occurred during her tenure as Prime Minister. Although she came close to winning the presidency earlier this year, her political eclipse seems complete. But no other leader has emerged to replace her in what was once believed to be a potentially strong opposition. Instead, the Regions team is rapidly entrenching itself for a lengthy period in power.

That is evident from preparations for the October 2010 municipal elections. Once again the government has introduced new rules, disenfranchising political blocs and parties in operation for less than one year. In one stroke, therefore, some of the main opposition forces have been disbarred, including the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, and Ukraine’s newest political party, For Fairness and Prosperity, founded only in July.

Yanukovych and his team have undermined democracy, flouted the Constitution at will, and imperiled national development. Some analysts have described the situation as the “Putinization” of Ukraine.

And yet Motyl’s prediction of an imminent collapse—at least by 2012—is far-fetched. Opinion polls suggest at least 45% of the electorate believes Ukraine is heading in the right direction. GDP will rise between 3 and 5% in 2010 following a fall of over 15% last year. Standard and Poor raised Ukraine’s long-term sovereign foreign currency rating from B to B+ on July 30. Austerity measures, including higher prices for gas, paved the way for the $15.15 billion stand-by loan from the IMF, with $1.89 billion available immediately to allow Ukraine to meet its current payments.

The economic reform program is in the hands of a non-member of the Regions team, Serhiy Tyhypko, who placed third in the 2010 presidential election and was appointed one of six deputy Prime Ministers. However, he is far too independent-minded for the government and his departure will likely soon follow now that the IMF loan has been secured.

That the president is an awkward public speaker, clownish, prone to mixing up events and places, and has a checkered past is well known. But his personal foibles and his government’s assault on democracy and Ukrainian national interests appear to be less important to the population than economic recovery.

This attitude, which may reverse the democratic gains of the Orange Revolution, is undoubtedly shortsighted but it is borne of difficult—even desperate—economic times.

This article was published in the EDMONTON JOURNAL on 9 August 2010.