Canned Democracy

Halya Coynash

It was a bad week for democracy in Ukraine with formal democratic processes as close to the real thing as canned laughter on a TV show to genuine mirth.

The door to Europe, and specifically the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement was all but slammed shut by the rejection on Wednesday of former Interior Minister Yury Lutsenko’s cassation appeal.  Ukraine’s High Specialized Court upheld the outcome of a trial, which, as repeatedly pointed out by the EU and the democratic community, “did not respect international standards as regards fair, transparent and independent legal processes.”

Rule of law was just as removed from a courtroom in Zaporizhzhya, which on 2 April convicted two former sacristans of the Svyatopokrovsk Church and the brother of one of them to 15 and 14-year prison sentences over the bomb blast in the Church on 28 July 2010.  Judge Minasov ignored the fact that there was no evidence in the case aside from multiple “confessions” made without proper defence, and almost certainly under physical and psychological pressure.  The confirmation of this by two forensic psychologists was ignored, while a third report which interpreted smiles, gestures etc during the night interrogations as evidence of an “inclination to crime”  was quoted in detail in the judgement.  Minasov had rejected applications to have all forensic psychologists summoned to give evidence.  The list of irregularities in this case is as long as that in the trial of Lutsenko, and widely believed to be linked with the fact that President Yanukovych at the time demanded arrests within the week.

In both these cases, as well as the ongoing attempt to charge former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko with murder, few believe that the judges – or prosecutor – in the cases are acting autonomously.

The case against Tymoshenko encountered a bump on 2 April with a key witness Serhiy Taruta testifying that at the time of the killing of MP and businessman Shcherban, there was no conflict between him and Tymoshenko.

The case is so dodgy that inconvenient bleeps may not overly worry those pulling the strings.  Renat Kuzmin, Deputy Prosecutor General, whose trips abroad to justify the trials of opposition leaders are organized by such PR companies as Burson-Marsteller, will simply accuse all critics, including authoritative western observers of defamation if they suggest any political motivation.

There were plenty of other uncomfortable subjects during the week.  They included the President’s income declaration which, for the second year in a row, declared 15 and a half million UAH in “royalties.”  The latter must be understood very loosely since the President did not publish a single word in 2012.  In fact, had he published even one book the royalties received per word would quite possibly outdo many international bestseller writers. The amount would also instantly bankrupt most publishing houses, at least in Ukraine.  Not, however, the Donetsk publisher Novy Svit which in 2011 paid 16.4 million UAH for all President Yanukovych’s works, past, present and future.  It now transpires that this was only the first instalment of an ongoing fee.

The use of the rightwing VO Svoboda Party to present the Party of the Regions as antidote to creeping fascism and xenophobia had a novel application on Wednesday with a number of Svoboda activists detained by police in Kyiv and interrogated for many hours.  The events had seemed to promise high drama with a Party of the Regions MP Iryna Horina reporting on Tuesday that after the close of the Verkhovna Rada’s evening session she and other women MPs had been pelted with snowballs, ice and dirt by members of a political protest.  She later apparently claimed that there had been an attempt to kill her.

A criminal investigation is underway, and the police felt no need to follow the restrictions of the new Criminal Procedure Code on how many hours witnesses can be interrogated. From a PR point of view, a trial would be as much of a loser as trying now to bring charges of hooliganism against the young man who so famously felled the then presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych with an egg in 2004.

Thursday was a full-on day for Ukraine’s MPs though few of the events bore much relation to parliamentary democracy.  With the opposition continuing to block the Verkhovna Rada tribune, the Party of the Regions, Communists and others who vote with the government decided to attempt a kind of outreach parliament – in the premises of the parliamentary committees on Bankova St.   There was supposedly a vote on this with 244 in favour (226 is a simple majority), however leader of the Batkivshchyna faction in parliament, Arseny Yatsenyuk asserted that only 168 MPs were actually present.

It was one side’s word against the other’s since opposition MPs were not allowed into the building on Bankova St.

Interpretation of the Parliamentary Regulations also depends on which side you listen to, and how one is to understand “exceptional circumstances”.

This is of enormous importance since the pro-government MPs (in person, or in name and MP card alone) managed to vote on 22 laws, one of which changed the 2013 State Budget.  All of this without open discussion and without the presence of the opposition who numerically cannot override a government vote, but can at least point to dangers in the laws passed.

What is particularly disturbing is that analysts asked by the Deutsche Welle Ukrainian Service considered the votes to be illegitimate, but were not at all confident that they would be revoked. Former MP Yury Klyuchkovsky pointed out that there had been similar situations during the 2000s and the laws passed, however dubiously, remained in force.  The Constitutional Court then refused to consider submissions from MPs asking for the laws to be declared unconstitutional.  In this regard it’s worth noting that the Constitutional Court in March for the fourth time refused to consider the highly controversial language law signed into force by President Yanukovych in August 2012.  This law effectively ignores the constitutional norm stipulating that Ukrainian is the sole official language and significantly increases the role of the Russian language.

Another specific smell from Ukraine’s parliamentarianism comes from turncoats or, in the Ukrainian, “tushki” (carcases).  On Thursday Speaker Rybak announced that four Batkivshchyna faction MPs had changed sides.  Interpretation of motives and / or incentives will inevitably depend on whose version you trust, however the phenomenon cannot under any circumstances be considered healthy.

It is also difficult to see it as democratic. Even during the last elections where 50% of the candidates entered parliament on party lists and 50% stood for election on an individual basis, the vast majority of voters would have voted for the party.

If MPs can then choose where the grass for them is greener, the voters’ electoral choice is rendered meaningless, like so many other fundamental components of democracy increasingly treated as cosmetic props.

Where Optimists and Pessimists Meet

Mykola Riabchuk

Three years ago, when Viktor Yanukovych was narrowly winning elections over Yulia Tymoshenko, very few people predicted future developments that would result in the full usurpation of power by a well-organized and extremely resourceful group of unscrupulous rent-seekers. It was an open secret, both then and now, that many regional bosses had a criminal past. Hennadiy Moskal, a former deputy minister of internal affairs, maintains that there are at least 18 of them in today’s parliament, all of them in the Party of Regions faction http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2013/03/21/6986155/.

Even without this (and many other) warnings, the living experience under two governments of Viktor Yanukovych – in 2002-2004 and 2006-2007 – should have been sufficient to understand what his ultimate victory would mean for the country. Sapienti sat, but Ukrainians seem to be incurable optimists. This might seem paradoxical in view of all the ordeals they suffered throughout their history. But maybe some resilient optimism is exactly what they need most to survive under unfavorable circumstances.

Even today, three years after Yanukovych’s victory and the complete destruction of state institutions, any warnings about the most probable steps to be undertaken by his devious team usually fall on deaf ears. Even seasoned experts typically respond: “No, they would not go that far!”

But they do. And there are no signs they are going to stop anywhere due to some legal, or moral, or merely technical reasons. If any rule, or law, or even the constitution restrain the usurpers, they easily change them, bypass, misinterpret, or ignore. This is how they created the illegitimate government, reshuffled the Constitutional Court, abandoned the Constitution, changed the electoral law, falsified local and, then, national parliamentary elections, imprisoned political opponents, subordinated the entire judiciary to the unconstitutional body called the Supreme Council of Justice, a mere handmaiden of the presidential administration, and more http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2013/03/25/6986377/.

Until recently, very few people imagined the tame courts could be used, four months after the elections, to withdraw mandates from a couple of disobedient deputies on the dubious legal ground of some alleged electoral violations. No Ukrainian law stipulates such an odd procedure but the goal of the legal novelty is clear: to send a message to all MPs that any of them could lose their mandate at any point, depending on the president’s whim and his team’s calculations. If the MPs refuse to accept carrots in a form of six-digit bribes, they should be ready to face the sticks http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2013/02/8/6983167/.

Sehiy Vlasenko, Yulia Tymoshenko’s legal adviser, became the latest victim of Ukraine’s notorious selective justice when the Supreme Administrative Court stripped him of his MP’s mandate on the grounds that he could not combine the activity of a professional attorney and work in the legislature. Despite the fact that all the evidence indicated that he did not represent Tymoshenko in court as an attorney but merely assisted her as a consultant (which is not forbidden by law), the judges adhered to their decision http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2013/03/6/6985032/.

Now, the Ukrainian optimists have got one more field to perfect their positive thinking. As the crucial presidential elections in 2015 loom large and the incumbent has virtually no chance to win them fairly, the possible tricks are pondered, ranging from possible changes of the constitution that would enable the election of the president by the (domesticated) parliament to a more sophisticated manipulation of the electoral process that would secure an easy victory for the incumbent against the radical rival in the second round. The first scenario was put in doubt after the parliamentary elections did not bring the Party of Regions the needed majority it needed to change the constitution at some later point. The second scenario was questioned recently by an opinion poll, which revealed that Yanukovych might lose the second round not only to Vitaliy Klychko (30% to 49%), Arseniy Yatseniuk (33 to 40) or Yulia Tymoshenko (33 to 36), but even to Oleh Tiahnybok, a radical nationalist, who was considered easy prey for the incumbent and therefore the most preferable sparring partner in the second round. Now, Tiahnybok lags only one per cent behind Viktor Yanukovych (32 to 33) and, as time passes and the situation deteriorates, may overrun the incumbent as a lesser evil in the eyes of the electorate http://ratinggroup.com.ua/products/politic/data/entry/14049/.

Therefore, Ukrainian authorities are musing over a new ploy: to conduct the presidential elections in a single round, that is to employ the first-past-the-post system, which largely helped them to win parliamentary elections last year. This does not require any changes to the constitution, other than to amend the law on elections to that of a simple majority. And once again, the Ukrainian optimists contend that the Regionals would not go so far. They argue that such presidential elections would not be internationally accepted and that the legitimacy of such a president would be very low. But there are no proofs that Ukrainian rulers care much about international practice, legality and legitimacy. Occasionally, they make some concessions to public opinion and international policy-makers but only to a degree that would not threaten their monopoly on power.

Their general approach to all the boring legal principles and procedures was aphoristically expressed by Mykhaylo Chechetov, the Party of Regions band-master who conducts the  “right” voting of his party fellows in the parliament by raising the hand (that means “yes”) or waving it (that means “no”). Last year, after his faction brazenly violated all the procedural requirements to push through the parliament a highly controversial law on languages, he boasted cynically to journalists: “Just realize the elegancy of our play! We tricked them (the opposition) like kittens!”

The meaning of “elegancy” of their play is perfectly characterized by a leading member of the Party of Regions who, back in 2004, headed the shadow, i.e. real electoral headquarters of Viktor Yanukovych, responsible for all electoral manipulations, contrary to the official headquarters, assigned the role of a show-window. According to Taras Chornovil, who worked at the time for Yanukovych, all his attempts to discourage colleagues from blatant falsifications encountered a typical response from the headquarters’ chief: “Why worry? Everything is under [our] control!” (Ne boysya! Vse skhvacheno”—the word “skhvacheno” comes from criminal jargon and means literally “is captured!”).

There are an increasing number of experts who believe that Yanukovych has already passed the point of no return and will now stay in power at any cost. Many Ukrainians used to have the same feeling about Leonid Kuchma after his alleged involvement in Heorhiy Gongadze’s murder. But, as Mykhaylo Dubyniansky argues, Kuchma had some internal restraints that are completely missing in Yanukovych. Kuchma was prone to bargain for security guarantees and retreat peacefully. Yanukovych would not trust in any guarantees since he destroyed the non-aggression pact among the elites himself. “He does not stand upon ceremony with the Constitution, does not stand with MPs, and would definitely not stand with protesters, however many of them go into the streets. Any attempt to dismiss Yanukovych – real, not farcical – would end up with violence. If anybody had cherished rosy illusions, they should have faded away last fall. We saw a bloody battle in Pervomaysk [during the elections], and tear gas in Kyiv, even though there was nothing particularly valuable to fight for. In two years, the stakes will be much higher – the personal security of Viktor Yanukovych, his family assets, and his beloved Mezhyhirya residence. Coercion would grow proportionally to the price of defeat”: http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2013/03/21/6986081/.

These gloomy predictions might contrast dramatically with some optimists’ views. A leading Ukrainian historian Yaroslav Hrytsak believes that “Ukraine has never had such a weak regime. To dismiss it is an easy and even joyful task” http://gazeta.ua/articles/grycak-jaroslav/_mudrist/415453.  Oksana Zabuzhko, a prominent Ukrainian writer, argues that: “by all indications, they are short-term rulers… And, when they—like teenagers who encourage themselves—cry threateningly that they have come to power ‘for a long time,’ it sounds ridiculous” http://unian.net/ukr/news/news-385145.html.  Yulia Mostova, the editor of the reputable Dzerkalo tyzhnia weekly, contends that “today’s authorities are weaker than ever before” because they are not able to “withstand the challenges that our nation encounters” http://gazeta.dt.ua/POLITICS/slabkist_silnih.html.  And Alexander Motyl, one of the most perceptive observers of current Ukrainian politics, is confident that Yanukovych’s deeply dysfunctional system “will collapse under its own dead weight. Most probably, that collapse will come in 2015, during the next presidential elections, or in 2020, after Yanukovych finishes his second term” http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/alexander-j-motyl/yanukovych-ruin-and-its-aftermath-part-1.

What both the optimists and the pessimists have in common is a profound concern about the regime’s succession. Indeed, whether the regime’s collapse occurs sooner or later, peacefully or violently, the new authorities, in any case, would have to solve an enormously difficult task of complete reconstruction of state institutions, from top to bottom. And, as Mykhaylo Dubyniansky aptly remarks, the tougher an authoritarian regime, the more likely its opponents-cum-successors would be very similar, as we have witnessed in Libya, Syria, and quite a few African states. In other words, Vitaliy Klychko may easily win an election against Viktor Yanukovych if it is free and fair. But if it were not conducted democratically, it would likely not be Klychko who orchestrates the dismissal of the usurper. Suffice it to recall the dismissal of Ceausescu, Qaddafi, or Assad to understand the challenges Ukraine is approaching.

 

Triumph of the Cargo Cult

Mykola Riabchuk

Six years ago, I published an article under the (perhaps too optimistic) title “Farewell to the Cargo Cult” (Berliner Zeitung, 13 April 2007). It was about the ongoing protests in Kyiv organized by the Party of Regions against president Viktor Yushchenko’s decree dissolving the parliament and declaring early parliamentary elections. The decree was indeed controversial but probably it was the only way to stop the creeping coup d’etat: the buying up and blackmailing of deputies in the parliament to form a pro-Yanukovych constitutional majority.

The protests staged by Yanukovych’s supporters looked like a parody of the Orange Maidan — a dull, uninventive imitation of the revolutionary events that had occurred in Kyiv two years earlier. The pathetic turnout of the “protesters,” their passivity and lack of enthusiasm, inability to explain what they were fighting for and off-record confessions about banal remuneration received for the participation in that political show made a striking contrast to the powerful civic spirit revealed during the 2004 revolution.

For me, it was a clear sign that Yanukovych and his Party of Regions believed sincerely that the Orange upheaval was brought about by money, and if they invested in similar fashion they would get the same result.  The “Cargo Cult” metaphor referred to a quasi-religious cult that emerged allegedly in the Pacific islands among the aboriginal tribes after the Second World War. During the war, aborigines witnessed American soldiers who received delightful goods, called “cargo”, from the sky. After Americans left, they decided to appease the sky gods in the same in order to get the same bounties. They developed a sophisticated ritual that imitated the landing of airplanes with bonfires around the landing stretch cut out of the jungle and native priests with wooden headphones communicating with their gods in some incomprehensible sacral language.

I confess I was wrong in using the word “farewell.” The Cargo Cult is alive and well in today’s Ukraine where the governing Party of Regions has made it a kind of a state religion. They worship it everywhere: in both political statements and institutional practices. Here and there, they imitate democratic elections, legal procedures, and parliamentary deliberations, with the candid hope that the European gods would bestow some sort of democratic legitimacy upon them or at least would not sanction them for skullduggery.

The new indictments of Yulia Tymoshenko for bribery, theft, tax evasion, and even killing a rival businessman back in 1996, represent a perfect example of “cargo” mentality: if our wooden headphones do not help us to communicate with the EU, let’s produce more wooden headphones. If there are no reliable proofs of Tymoshenko’s wrongdoing, let’s produce more unreliable proofs, hoping that sheer quantity would substitute for the dismal quality. It would be funny, if was not so depressing. If very shaky evidence sufficed to sentence Yulia Tymoshenko to seven years in prison for the gas deal with Putin, even shakier evidence – but a greater amount – may well suffice to give her a life sentence in a country where no independent judiciary exists.

So far, the court process looks even more farcical than it looked two years ago when the routine political-cum-economic decision was notoriously criminalized. All the witnesses summoned by prosecutors are reasonably suspected of being in their pockets [http://blogs.pravda.com.ua/authors/chornovol/511cf62064a09]. All of them had either a criminal past and long history of cooperation with the authorities, probably as paid agents [http://blogs.pravda.com.ua/authors/chornovol/511e5bc4a816d], or some would-be criminal problems today that are likely to be solved only through their “cooperation” [http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2013/02/13/6983385/]. Remarkably, none of them has had any personal contact with Yulia Tymoshenko, nor they have any direct proof of her involvement in the criminal case. All their testimony to the court is based on some ambiguous information they presumably heard from others who have typically disappeared and can neither confirm nor deny the allegations. Remarkably, all of them kept this hearsay evidence unrevealed for seventeen years, ostensibly because they were afraid of Tymoshenko’s revenge, even though she became the prime minister only in 2005. Before that, she was persecuted and even imprisoned briefly by Leonid Kuchma. He was not so inventive, however, to accuse her of murder. And, surprisingly, none of today’s witnesses gave him a hint.

The authorities not only failed to produce any serious evidence of Tymoshenko’s involvement in the 1996 contract killing of Yevhen Shcherban. They failed even to explain persuasively what might have been her interest in such a plot [http://blogs.pravda.com.ua/authors/chornovol/5122684597f9f/]. The only argument is that there were some tensions between Tymoshenko’s boss (and Ukraine’s prime minister at the time) Pavlo Lazarenko and the victim, hardly an unusual situation in Ukrainian business environment. Yet, as two business partners of the late Mr Shcherban — ­Serhiy Taruta [http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2013/02/8/6983135/ ] and Vitaliy Hayduk [http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2013/02/19/6983862/] — testify, all the disputes had been solved by that time and Lazarenko had no reason to embark on such crude methods as killing. Actually, as prime minister, he had much more subtle instruments to promote his own business and intimidate disobedient rivals. Viktor Yanukovych must be perfectly aware of this.

Furthermore, even if one imagines that Mr Lazarenko went crazy and decided to do something irrational, he certainly did not need any assistance and mediation from Mme Tymoshenko, a minor pawn in his business empire, much more suitable for performing clean rather than dirty jobs [http://gazeta.ua/articles/479282]. There have always been plenty of professionals in this field in Ukraine, and even today such a job does not cost $3 million as the prosecutor alleges. Back in 1996, the experts claim, it was about ten times cheaper.

It is not clear, indeed, whether the Ukrainian authorities expect to sentence Tymoshenko to life imprisonment on such dubious legal grounds. What is clear, however, is they may well do so, since the previous case that cost Tymoshenko seven years in prison was not much better substantiated. Hatred is blind, and fear makes people vengeful. In Yanukovych’s case, all these unpleasant characteristics are only multiplied by his poor culture and education, provincial outlook, and lack of wise and committed advisers.

Taras Chornovil, who closely cooperated with him in 2004-2007, believes that “Yanukovych has many complexes, including the ‘blockaded Leningrad’ complex: “he cannot feed himself, he still is hungry for money, property, luxury.” And Tymoshenko, Chornovil contends, threatened to imprison him and re-nationalize “Mezhyhirya,” a government residence on 100 hectares of land near Kyiv, illicitly privatized by Yanukovych when he was prime minister. “I guess, he read these words shortly before he made his decision on Tymoshenko. I know for sure that two weeks earlier there was a large meeting and big debate in his administration on how to continue the process and what to do with her. The prevailing opinion was that Yulia should be accused but left free. But the subsequent denunciation made her arrest unavoidable” [http://gazeta.ua/articles/480185].

This evidence renders any hopes for the imminent release of Yulia Tymoshenko ephemeral, as also any chance of signing the Association Agreement with the EU in the foreseeable future. People who preach the “Cargo Cult” simply do not understand what real airplanes – let alone real democracy, rule of law, and European integration – actually mean. The only good thing is that here, in the post-Soviet realm, they do not practice ritualistic cannibalism. Luckily for us all, they follow a somewhat different political and gastronomic tradition. So far, they have indulged themselves only with the ritualistic imprisonment of their political rivals.

“Family” on the March

Mykola Riabchuk

Ukraine has entered the New Year with a new government approved in the parliament by the Party of Regions, their Communist satellites, and a dozen “independents” engaged by both hook and crook. There are few changes in the content of the new-old government, either in personalities, or (even less) in its spirit, i.e. the expected policies. Some ministers, like Borys Kolesnikov, moved into the parliament to serve as MPs; others, like Valery Khoroshkovsky, resigned citing policy disagreements; and still others were moved to honorable positions as presidential advisers, like SBU chief Ihor Kalinin and Minister of Defense Dmytro Salamatin, or were promoted to seemingly prestigious but less influential positions of deputy prime ministers, like former Minister of Foreign Affairs Kostiantyn Hryshchenko and former Minister of Energy and Coal Industry Yury Boyko.

There are no signs, however, that all these moves were connected to the incumbents’ policy failures or corruption scandals, and no signs that the new nominations are merit-based and policy-driven. Again, more than half of the ministers were either born in the Donbas region or made some crucial part of their careers there. It seems the president and his team feel no need to hide or justify this peculiar regional cronyism—staffing police, judiciary, and tax services all over Ukraine with Donbas people [http://expres.ua/main/2012/01/31/59312], giving various preferences to regional business, or endorsing over 46% of the budget subventions for social and economic development to two privileged oblasts, Donetsk and Luhansk, – 618 million UAH ($76.2 million)  [http://www.epravda.com.ua/columns/2012/12/24/352306/].

The only shamelessness overshadowing this regional cronyism is the nepotism of the president and his son. The latter is particularly notorious for the promotion of his close friends and business associates to top governmental positions. Now, his clients have taken an even firmer grip over Ukraine’s economy and law-enforcement agencies. Besides the General Prosecutor’s office, which fully staffed with Yanukovych’s loyalists from Donbas, and the Security Service and Ministry of Defense subordinated directly to the president, the Family controls the Interior Ministry, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Agrarian Policy, National Bank, and a newly created Klondike—the Ministry of Revenues and Duties, which has replaced the Customs Service (loaned out until recently to the Communist allies) and National Tax Administration. The most conspicuous event is the rise of the 36-year-old Serhiy Arbuzov, within a few years, from the manager of a minor bank in Donetsk to the head of the National Bank and, now, to first deputy prime minister. Rumors are afoot that it is only a matter of time until he replaces incumbent Prime Minister Mykola Azarov.

Serhiy Leshchenko, a leading Ukrainian investigative journalist, aptly characterizes the new government as representing the “undisguised advance of the ‘Family’ into the main power cabinets and onto the major budget flows… Whereas filling and distribution of the budget was already under the ‘Family’s’ control, the really new acquisition by Sasha-the-dentist [Yanukovych junior] is the Ministry of Energy and Coal Industry given to Eduard Stavytsky” [http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2012/12/25/6980434/].

According to Leshchenko, Stavytsky facilitated a number of business schemes for the Family, including the murky privatization of the Mezhyhirya estate for Viktor Yanukovych [http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2009/11/5/4293541/].

These six persons—Arbuzov, Stavytsky, the Interior Minister Vitaly Zakharchenko, the Minister of Finance Yury Kolobov, the Minister of Revenues and Duties Oleksandr Klymenko, and the Minister of Agrarian Policy Mykola Prysiazhniuk are nicknamed the “Big Six”—the core of the inner circle of the extended Yanukovych “Family.” Consolidation of their positions in the government, Leshchenko argues, reflects Yanukovych’s increasing distrust of outsiders. “He agrees to entrust his future exclusively to the people with whom he has profited within the past years in power.”

Whether these people will be able and willing to carry out the much-needed reforms, which would inevitably undermine the Family’s profits, is a rhetorical question. No one has ever heard of any reformist plans, or even serious activities among them. They have very “limited competence to rule the country”, the Polish analyst Slawomir Matuszak implied delicately in his report last year on the “Oligarchic Democracy. The Influence of Business Groups on Ukrainian Politics.” Therefore, he concludes, “While future reshuffles among the groups of influence are possible (and will certainly take place), there is still little chance that the model of relations between the ruling class and big business will change, at least in the medium term” [http://www.osw.waw.pl/sites/default/files/Prace_42_EN.pdf].

Dmytro Mendeleyev defines these types of managers as “typical schemers” (схемотехніки) – people whose major goal and main skill is to “extract more money [for the Family] by means of newer, faster, and more efficient schemes” [http://politikan.com.ua/8/11/0/51147.htm].

Such a deeply dysfunctional regime, Alexander Motyl argues, is a “leading candidate for stagnation and decay. And, sooner or later, the sultanistic Yanukovych system will collapse under its own dead weight.” Motyl tends to believe that this will happen rather sooner than later because the regime has already attained the “highest stage” of sultanism and can experience little institutional development in the next three to eight years: “Yanukovych and his family cannot acquire more power, the other institutions of government cannot become more meaningless, and the Regionnaires cannot become more rapacious” [http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/alexander-j-motyl/yanukovych-ruin-and-its-aftermath-part-1].

He is wrong. The Family has acquired a lot of power but can take still more by destroying alternative centers of power and wealth and eliminating the remnants of relative pluralism in Ukraine. At least one institution, the parliament (not to mention some city and regional councils), is not yet meaningless, and the Family might be tempted to emasculate it completely. And the rapaciousness of the ruling “elite” still has some space for development (privatization of land, takeover of citizens’ bank savings, sale of the national sovereignty, and the like): intestinal worms basically do not care much about the organism they exhaust.

We, the experts, may be perfectly aware that such a system has no prospects for the future and sooner or later “will collapse under its own weight.” But this does not mean that the rapacious “elites” understand this as well, and that even they do, they believe in a “sooner” rather than “later.” As Alexander Motyl himself acknowledges: “Because sultanistic regimes are invariably corrupt and conservative, there is no reason to think that the avaricious mediocrities who man the Yanukovych system will be able or willing to sacrifice their well-being to vague notions of reform, especially if reform undermines their power and privilege.”

Rather, logically, they would try to tighten the screws and accelerate the looting of resources, while keeping the population, as it always has been in this country, at the minimal subsistence level.

A few years ago, an influential member of the Party of Regions and of the parliament, former “red director” and current oligarch Volodymyr Landyk made a revealing statement at the end of a lengthy interview. It reflects the mentality of his class and the political force that runs the country but is seldom expressed so candidly:

“What is the difference between Ukraine’s East and West?” – the journalists asked.

“Well, just take a look how a steel worker or machinist works in the East. There are terrible conditions. He earns $200-300. In the meantime, vuyko [a derogatory name for Westerners] says: ‘Why should I work for such money? I’d rather go to a Pole, and do some house work for him, he’ll give me a 100 bucks, and then I’ll come again [to Poland].’ They have such a mentality. We planned to open our factory in Ivano-Frankivsk. But failed. We had to bring our people there by train because vuykies did not want work. Even though we offered the same salary as in Donetsk.”

And what is Mr. Landyk’s conclusion? Should he increase the salary at least to the Polish level? Or, maybe, ameliorate the “terrible conditions”? Definitely not!

“Everyone must work. We should close the borders and produce our own products. We’ll try to do this within the next ten years: or longer, if necessary” [http://obkom.net.ua/articles/2010-11/05.1739.shtml].

Unfortunately, this tells more about Ukraine’s probable future than all the government’s programs, president’s statements, and the shrewd analytical deliberations of political pundits.

HAVING THE CAKE AND EATING IT TOO

Mykola Riabchuk

On the eve of President Vikto Yanukovych’s visit to Moscow on December 19, many Ukrainian experts were confident that the game was over and the beleaguered Ukrainian president would accept Putin’s invitation to the Customs Union as a sine qua non condition for the much-needed lowering of gas prices. The visit was postponed, however, because the agreement on energy cooperation had not been yet finalized http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2012/12/21/6980243/.

There are also some unofficial explanations of the canceled event, ranging from Putin’s whim to a miraculous call from Brussels and promise to soften the EU’s stance on the association agreement. The most feasible argument was discussed in detail in Ekonomichna pravda: some Ukrainian oligarchs have raised a new rescue idea, very similar to the old one realized by the unforgettable RosUkrEnergo http://www.epravda.com.ua/publications/2012/12/19/351560/.

Since his accession to power, Viktor Yanukovych has seemed to be musing over the classical question: how to have one’s cake and eat it too? In other words, how can one exploit the economy for the benefit of cronies and kinsmen, yet keep it alive? How to imitate a democracy and retain authoritarian power? How to befriend the West but avoid the burden of incorporating Western values and the rule of law in particular? How to gain concessions from Moscow without conceding one’s own and one’s clan’s sovereignty?

So far, the process of eating has gone much more smoothly than that of keeping the country afloat. Those perusing Ukrainska Pravda or other independent news sites regularly, would find, every day, a whole series of new facts about some government schemes: misuse of funds, tax evasion, dubious purchases at exorbitant prices from murky off-shore intermediaries, raider attacks, scandalous court rulings, and various examples of lawlessness that make up a fabric of Ukrainian social reality. Remarkably, all these facts that would cause scandals in a normal country and lead to dismissal of corrupt officials and a court investigation, evoke typically no official reaction in Ukraine. If something does not exist on TV (fully controlled by the government), it does not exist at all. Actually, only 20 per cent of the population obtains information from the Internet, whereas 80 per cent receives it primarily or exclusively from TV.

The government seems to believe in the virtual TV world it created for the gullible population. Nothing the government did within the past two months signals any desire to change course, tame the appetites of the “Family,” and carry out comprehensive reforms that may be the only way to save the country. Neither the clear popular vote against the incumbents, nor international condemnation of the rigged elections, nor the dire state of the Ukrainian economy and the even bleaker prospects for the future have compelled the president and his team to revise a single item of their impending disastrous policies.

First, the 2013 national budget was rubber-stamped by the parliament in the best traditions of the ruling Party of Regions: without any discussion but with numerous loopholes and tasty morsels for the “Family” insiders and associates.

Secondly, the new parliamentary majority was formed through the familiar pattern of bribery, blackmail, and intimidation of independent MPs. Many of the latter are connected to various businesses, either personally or via close relatives, and are therefore highly vulnerable to government influence. Opposition MPs are also subjected to pressure. So far, only two of them, from Yatseniuk’s party, have switched sides openly, but reports suggest that many more are being “persuaded” by various means to make the “right” choice http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2012/12/13/6979494/.

Thirdly, even though the new government has not yet been formed, the approved return of Mykola Azarov to the position of the prime minister does not bode any significant changes to the previous stagnant and corrupt policies. The election of 66-year Volodymyr Rybak, Yanukovych’s close friend from Donetsk, as chairman of the Ukrainian parliament, also confirms the desire to preserve the status quo and keep away any strong figures from top governmental positions that might provide them a good platform in the future to threaten Yanukovych http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2012/12/14/6979768/.

And fourthly, the outgoing parliament has rubber-stamped one more document that might pose grim consequences not only for Ukraine but also for Yanukovych himself. This was the law on national referendums that is widely believed to be a vehicle for his re-election for a second or even third term but might also become a tricky instrument in the hands of pro-Moscow forces to undermine the sovereignty of both Yanukovych and Ukraine in general.

The controversial law was passed at the first reading two years ago and seemed to have been forgotten until last November when the de-facto electoral defeat of the Party of Regions buried the “Family’s” hopes of mustering a qualified majority of two-thirds of MPs in the new parliament to amend the constitution at Yanukovych’s convenience, as has occurred in several post-Soviet states to satiate local dictators. Now, the anti-constitutional law on referendums means that the authorities can bypass the last remnants of constitutionalism in Ukraine by transforming the results of any plebiscite directly into law, without the need for parliamentary approval.

The referendum can be initiated either by Verkhovna Rada or the “people.” That latter make take such an initiative is very unlikely, however. Even if the “people” collect the required 3 million signatures to support a proposal, there is no independent judiciary in Ukraine to protect these signatures from being dismissed as “fake” by authorities, as happens on a daily basis in Putin’s Russia http://zakon1.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/1286-12.

It is a ticking bomb that is much more dangerous for Ukrainian democracy and sovereignty than any other of Yanukovych’s initiatives, including joining the ominous Customs Union. So far, all the Moscow-led “integration” projects have brought unimpressive results. All Russia’s neighbors are well aware what that kind of “integration” means. Few of them dare, however, to utter a definite “no” to those tricky initiatives (Georgia might be the very graphic exception). Therefore, they typically say “yes, but…” And that “but” stands for various forms of lip service and sabotage that undermines effectively “integration” projects without a direct and potentially dangerous confrontation with Moscow.

There is no reason to believe that Yanukovych’s “Family” is eager to give up Ukrainian customs to any “union” and deprive themselves of such a powerful source of income. The greed of these people might be the best if not the only guardian of Ukraine’s sovereignty–at least as long as their personal security in Ukraine is not under threat. But their incompetence and provincial naivety can make them (and all the nation, alas) an easy prey of the seasoned KGB hunters. Neither the 2010 “Kharkiv agreements” nor the recent scandal with LNG terminal (when the government signed an agreement with a bogus representative of a Spanish company) give much credibility to the alleged “professionalism” of the ruling team.

In October 2012, a leaked conversation of a Russian “political technologist” Semen Uralov, who worked in Odesa for the leader of the “Rodina” party Igor Markov, referred to the eventual victory of the unambiguously pro-Russian forces in Ukraine supposedly led by Viktor Medvedchuk. They implied also an honorable exile for Mr. Yanukovych in his opulent Mezhyhirya mansion, with a private zoo among other luxury possessions. The interlocutors joked about him being “locked in with his kangaroos”: “Ігор днями зустрічався з ВВМ [Віктором Володимирoвичeм Медведчуком]. Той підтвердив загальну концепцію. Не пізніше 15 року все зміниться, а цього пiдoра заженемо до його кенгуру у Межигір’я, а поки що – збираємо групу у Раді” (http://pr-portal.com.ua/peredovitsa/15895.php?sphrase_id=5446311).

It might be a good time to ponder whether a Putin-sponsored and Medvedchuk-led referendum, with a properly formulated question, would not be a much quicker way to push Ukraine into the Russian orbit than the awkward, barely functioning, and a priori unworkable Customs Union.

Basic Instinct

Mykola Riabchuk

The Party of Regions was set to win the parliamentary elections for a number of reasons. First of all, it is not only a party but also a powerful political machine that has merged almost inseparably with big business and the state apparatus. Within the past two years, it has established full control over the judiciary and major mass media, adjusted the national constitution and numerous laws for its personal benefit, and multiplied its enormous financial resources extracted rapaciously from both the state budget and shadow economy. Inter alia, its leaders re-crafted the electoral playing field to suit their own needs: changed the election law, gerrymandered the districts, reshuffled election commissions, and endorsed a carte-blanche for all forms of illegal agitation to their loyalists.

On the other side, the opposition failed to endorse single candidates in majority districts, which was a crucial task under the first-past-the-post system. Still worse, they failed to rebrand themselves as a profoundly new political force that had deduced proper conclusions from the orange defeat, removed corrupted and inefficient leaders, and brought new people, ideas, and ethos into the political domain. The demand for new faces in Ukrainian rotten politics is very high, and the spectacular success of newcomers – Vitaly Klychko’s UDAR party and right-wing Svoboda – largely reflects the popular need for political forces not connected to the establishment and its discredited practices. The “old” opposition – Yulia Tymoshenko’s “Fatherland” party and Arseny Yatseniuk – ran with traditional candidates and slogans that could bring them support from the core electorate but barely exceeded the 25 per cent limit.

In Ukraine, where politics is largely identity-based and elections are identity-driven, the incumbents can also rely on some 25 per cent of the core electorate that would always prefer the perceived “lesser evil”: “our bad boys” over “theirs.” With some extra-legal means, they can always get a plurality that could be transformed eventually, by similar means, into majority. In a purely proportional system, such a transformation is more problematic, so, predictably, Party of Regions replaced it with a mixed system that ushers MPs to a half of the parliament from territorial districts on the first-past-the-post basis.

All the opinion polls predicted the Party of Regions would win about 30 per cent from the party list and many more from the single-mandate districts where, in most cases, voters are highly vulnerable to bribery and intimidation, and where even minor falsifications can be decisive. The main problem experts discussed on the eve of elections was not who was going to win the contest but how strong that victory would be and how solid a majority the Party of Regions would be able to secure with its notorious sticks and carrots.

The October 28 poll largely confirmed the experts’ forecasts in the voting for party lists. The Party of Regions got 30%, the United Opposition, despite Yulia Tymoshenko’s imprisonment, 25.5%, Vitaly Klychko’s UDAR 14%, Communist Party 13.2%, and far-right Svoboda  10.4%.  All these results were fairly close to the election-day exit polls, with the only exception being in some Donbas districts where the turnout was much higher on paper than in reality. The pre-election opinion surveys looked a bit different but all the changes can be rationally explained.  UDAR got less votes than predicted probably because of a low turnout of its core youth electorate. And the radicals from Svoboda and Communist Party got more than expected because they were able to channel a substantial part of the “protest vote” (“against all”) into their pots. (Another explanation includes the possible reluctance of some surveyed people to acknowledge openly their sympathy for radicals).

In sum, even though the playing field was not level and the election campaign was heavily manipulated by the authorities, the government had a very good chance to legitimize the elections as basically free if not fair, and to achieve some alleviation of the international isolation imposed upon the Ukrainian leadership after last year’s imprisonment of Tymoshenko.

It seems, however, that the government missed this opportunity because the majority-seat part of the elections did not occur as smoothly as the proportional part. In at least a dozen districts in which opposition candidates took an unexpected lead the worst practices of vote rigging from the late Kuchma era were applied. In some of them, even after a week of counting, the results had not been announced. In some places, astonished observers witnessed the destruction of ballots, distortion of tabulations, forging of protocols, attacks of unidentified skinheads on polling stations, the use of tear gas, and intervention of riot police to confiscate ballot boxes, arguably to protect them.

It is still unclear why Ukrainian authorities employed these excessive measures (or at least allowed their loyalists to employ them) for such a minor and hardly needed gain of a dozen more seats in the parliament. First of all, because of scarcely legal changes to the Ukrainian constitution in 2010, the country became, once again, a super-presidential republic, and the role of the parliament was effectively marginalized. And secondly, by all preliminary calculations, the Party of Regions could easily muster the needed majority through an alliance with the Communists (traditional satellites) and many of “independents,” so that a dozen MPs from the controversial districts were not much needed.

Besides the conspiracy theories suggesting the “Russian hand” intended to compromise Ukraine internationally, one may look for more rational explanations of the Ukrainian incumbents’ irrational behavior. First, the losers may act without the authorities’ consent because they invested substantial personal funds in the election campaign and could not accept such a double defeat. Second, local authorities could have been eager to achieve the demanded results by all possible means; fear of punishment for non-delivery is apparently stronger in Yanukovych’s Ukraine than fear of punishment for the violation of law.  And third, and most important, the stakes might be higher than they appear. The Party of Regions needs not a simple but qualified majority (of two thirds MPs) in the parliament to change the national constitution and secure the 2015 re-election of Viktor Yanukovych in the parliament instead of a highly uncertain popular national vote.

They can hardly forget that Leonid Kuchma, who also had plenty of sticks and carrots to offer, had nearly mustered the much-needed majority to amend the constitution but failed by a meager six votes in the decisive vote. The oligarchs are unreliable. They are good allies to keep the opposition at bay and loot the country. But at some point thy may feel that their own interests are under threat, especially when the president and his “family” grab too much power and property, or when the parliament and its stakeholders may become obsolete.

Actually, there might be a fourth reason for the seemingly irrational behavior of Ukrainian rulers. Most of them are from the Donbas, the region that has never experienced any political, cultural, or economic pluralism. Many of them came from the criminal underworld where no tolerance, or compromise, or power sharing has ever been valued. They know perfectly well that the winner gets all, might makes right, goals justify means, and those who are not with us are against us. They are not accustomed to lose because losers, in their Darwinist world, are extinguished. They cannot recognize someone’s victory, especially by a small margin. All their instincts are opposed to such a phenomenon. They see any compromise as a symbol of weakness, and any retreat as capitulation.

This attitude suggests there is little chance of Tymoshenko being released until Yanukovych is ousted, and only a slim possibility for more open, inclusive, consensual politics in Ukraine in the near future. The conflict between the government and society is likely to escalate, culminating in Yanukovych’s inevitable and legitimate defeat in 2015 or his complete usurpation of power for years to come.

So far, Ukrainians have won a few minor battles but not the war. They proved, at least in some electoral districts, including the remarkable case of Kyiv, that civic spirit, courage, and unity could withstand brutal force, lying, cheating, and bribery. The Party of Regions, so far, has failed to establish complete control over the parliament. This does not mean its leaders will not try to attain such predominance within the next two years. They are very unlikely to curb their basic instincts unless and until society itself becomes civil enough to civilize them.

UKRAINE’S PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS: LITTLE TO SATISFY REGIONS PARTY

David Marples

With 99.6% of the votes counted, Ukraine’s election results are very similar to those of the exit polls released on October 28. In terms of popular vote, Regions lead with 30.03%, with Batkivshchyna at 25.51%, UDAR 13.94%, the Communist Party of Ukraine 13.18%, and Svoboda 10.44%. These five parties are the only ones to clear the 5% minimum threshold. Projected seats in the new parliament, as published in Ukrains’ka Pravda on November 1 (http://www.pravda.com.ua), are Regions 186 (114 in individual constituencies), Batkivshchyna 104 (42), independents 44, UDAR 40, Svoboda 37 (including 12 in individual constituencies), and KPU 32.

Although there have been reports from the OSCE and Canadian sources of serious electoral violations (http://www.interfax.com.ua/eng/press-conference/123721/), and a statement from Yuliya Tymoshenko that this was the “most unfair election in the history of Ukraine” and that she would go on a hunger strike in her prison cell (http://www.interfax.com.ua/eng/main/124638/ )  the results of the seats contested by proportional representation appear to reflect, more or less, the views of the voters. The same cannot be said of the results in single-mandate constituencies where Regions won an outright majority. The reinsituted dual system, as noted by Taras Kuzio, has worked in favor of the authorities, just as it did in previous elections (http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=40030). In 2002, for example, a disastrous showing for President Leonid Kuchma’s For a United Campaign was offset by the accumulation of seats in the single constituencies, thus preventing Our Ukraine from winning an outright majority.

Several preliminary comments can be made. First, Batkivshchyna did much better in the latter part of the campaign at which time its vote seemed to be declining. Correspondingly, support for UDAR seemed to fall away as the election approached, perhaps because of voters’ concern at the relative inexperience of its leader, the boxing champion Vitali Klitschko. Nevertheless, Klitschko has emerged as a viable opposition leader with an excellent showing for a first campaign but he is concerned about the emergence of Svoboda, and is unlikely to enter any form of coalition or alliance with them. Both the Communists on the left and Svoboda on the right fared well. Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok maintained that the Ukrainian Security Service controlled the placement of data in the server of the Central Election Commission, thereby depriving his party of “every third vote” (Interfax-Ukraina, Oct 30). Compared to the exit polls, polling for Svoboda was down by between 1-2.6%, but still within the margin of error. Still, Ukraine now faces the likelihood of an even more fractious parliament in which extremist parties have gained a firm foothold

Overall it should be possible for the Regions Party to cobble together a majority with the assistance of the Communists and independent candidates. Not surprisingly given the prevalence of state propaganda, Regions performed much better in individual constituencies than those elected by proportional representation. In terms of the popular vote, 51.47% of those who took part preferred non-ruling parties and 43.21 backed the Regions or Communist Party. Though the latter party fared better than in the previous election, its leader Petro Symonenko has denounced the election campaign the “dirtiest” in the entire period of Ukraine’s independence, including blackmail and intimidation, and violations of legality in vote counting in the Luhansk region in particular (Interfax Ukraine, Oct 30).

There can be no room for complacency or even satisfaction from the perspective of President Viktor Yanukovych and his ruling party. Despite the arrests of Tymoshenko last year and former Interior Minister Yuri Lutsenko earlier in 2012, the opposition has maintained significant support. A prominent role is assured for the interim Batkivshchyna leader Arsenii Yatsenyuk, who is frequently dismissed as too intellectual or bookish and lacking in charisma (see for example Kuzio at http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=40030). But the question remains when Yulia Tymoshenko will be released and take up her role as leader of the opposition. Moreover, the election has failed to convince the Europeans in particular that there has been any moderation of recent authoritarian trends. Without the release of Tymoshenko and Lutsenko, there is unlikely to be much progress on Ukraine’s Association Agreement with the EU.

Above all, with a 58% turnout, less than 31% supported Regions, which gained significant victories only in the eastern areas, their traditional stronghold. In other words, 69% backed other parties and candidates, and only 18% of those eligible to vote backed the Regions. It is hardly an overwhelming mandate at a time when the country is threatened with a serious economic recession. In fact one would have to say, given the Regions’ overwhelming control of state institutions, their enormous financial backing and largesse, and their preponderance in the media, their supporters can only consider this election a failure. They cannot look forward to the next step in their consolidation of state power, namely the presidential elections of 2015. On the other hand, as the example of Belarus has demonstrated, it is often very hard to remove incumbents once they control the machinery of state.

 

Electoral Songs

Mykola Riabchuk

In three weeks’ time, on the last Sunday of October, Ukrainians will elect 450 members of the new parliament, half of them from the national party list, and half from territorial districts. Opinion polls reveal more or less equal support for both the pro-government forces (Party of Regions and Communists – 25 and 9 per cent respectively) and opposition (Yulia Tymoshenko’s Motherland and Vitaliy Klychko’s Udar – 15 and 17 per cent) http://www.gfknop.com/pressinfo/releases/singlearticles/010454/index.en.html.  This means that the remaining one third of votes will be cast for the plethora of minor parties that have virtually no chances to surpass the 5 per cent threshold. All these votes will be distributed proportionally among the winners. In fact, it is a gift for the incumbents since most of the minor parties below the threshold represent the opposition.

Lack of unity is a persistent problem of Ukrainian democrats, and is especially harmful vis-a-vis the monolithic unity of the authoritarian rulers. Admittedly, their unity is not based on any positive ideology but primarily on sharing the spoils and suppressing dissent by various means—from bribery and persuasion to media censorship and manipulation, blackmail, intimidation, and selective application of the law. Enormous resources extracted from budget loopholes and the shadow economy make the Party of Regions a formidable force, quite competitive on the party list (despite its disastrous social and economic policies) and unbeatable in the territorial districts where vote buying reigns supreme.

To make a bad situation worse, the new electoral law not only increased the threshold from 3 to 5 per cent, targeting primarily the opposition parties but also introduced the “first-past-the-post” system within the majoritarian districts that require a simple plurality, rather than a clear majority of votes to win. This system allows the incumbents not to worry too much about their popularity—20 per cent of their core electorate might suffice if their opponents are successfully split, dispersed, and pitted against each other. To this end, a numerous fake parties and “technical” candidates are registered with the goal to spoil the electoral process in multiple ways. As many as 3,109 candidates will compete for 225 mandates in the majoritarian districts: nearly 14 persons per seat. And, tellingly, there are only 389 women compared to 2,720 men, 67 less than five years ago when women were also badly underrepresented. Predictably, very few candidates are economists, lawyers, or professional policy makers. Instead, 1,082 of them are businessmen of different calibers, which is common practice in a country in which the only protection for businessmen is parliamentary immunity, and where the most profitable business is looting state resources and exploiting  legal loopholes http://dt.ua/POLITICS/mazhoritarka_desyat_rokiv_po_tomu-108785.html.

Whereas businessmen and various state officials are serious contenders, a huge number of drivers, secretaries, night guards, barmen, and unemployed persons (293 this time) are playing the traditional role of spoilers. Some of them, incidentally, have the same surnames and even full names as opposition frontrunners in their districts; many others play a modest auxiliary role by promoting their representatives into election commissions to ensure the total preponderance of the authorities in electoral bodies. And, on the party list, one may observe the same phenomenon: a group of unknown parties mushrooming during elections, often with very peculiar names like “Our Motherland” (surely not to be confused with Yulia Tymoshenko’s “Motherland”?).

Still, a simple majority in the parliament is hardly the main prize for which the Party of Regions deploys its unscrupulous methods. After the 2004 constitutional amendments were arbitrarily cancelled, Ukraine became once again a presidential republic with a minor role for the legislature. Second, as we already saw in 2002, 2006, and, most recently 2010, the Party of Regions can easily muster a parliamentary majority by carrots and sticks, neither of which are in short supply.

The real problem it faces face (not only in Ukraine) is the succession of power. One may easily win the first-past-the-post contest with a mere 20 per cent of vote if proper “technologies” are applied, but no technology can secure a victory in the nationwide elections of president where a clear majority of votes is required. For Viktor Yanukovych, with ratings below 20 per cent and little chance of rising, the only way to get re-elected for a second term and secure his “Family’s” dubious wealth is to change the national constitution and arrange his own re-election via an obedient parliament rather than through the electorate. It was with this goal in mind that the so-called constitutional assembly was created last year from the handpicked “specialists” (the opposition refused to participate, feeling the trap). Thus, most likely, we shall witness a bold attempt to muster a qualified majority of two-thirds of MPs in the next parliament, enabling it to change the constitution and solve Yanukovych’s problem of reelection in 2015.

The opposition is doomed to lose not only because the entire electoral field has been systemically fixed to the incumbents’ advantage and because most of the “independents” in the parliament will be (as usual) businessmen susceptible to the authorities’ blackmail and siding typically with the victors. The opposition is losing because it has committed too many mistakes, of which the most profound was the failure to draw the proper conclusions from the Orange defeat, to dismiss its leaders and reshuffle cadres, to change programs and rhetoric, and to pay due attention to grass-root movements and party-building. They failed to get rid of their own fat cats and dolce vita habits, to bring in new faces and develop a new image. They never bothered even to say “sorry” to their frustrated and disappointed electorate. The main problem of the Ukrainian opposition is that its leaders are broadly perceived as almost as bad as the incumbents; people may vote for them as a lesser evil, but are unlikely to be committed wholesale to their victory.

The strong advance of Vitaliy Klychko’s party Udar, which emerged from the blue as a one-person project, is clear proof of the popular need for new faces, new forces, and new policies completely detached from the corrupted and feckless practices of the past. In a recent survey, Udar (the “blow”–it is also the acronym of the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reforms) outran Tymoshenko’s Motherland, dogged by imprisonment of the leader, slandering in the pro-government media, and undermined by the enforced change of the name from the popular BUT (Yulia Tymoshenko Block) to the virtually unknown Motherland (after the new law barred electoral blocks from running). More and more people seem to invest their political hopes in the heavyweight boxer—hardly a charismatic figure— whose main advantage is that he has never belonged to the Ukrainian establishment, has no record of corruption, and seemingly represents a different, hopefully Western, political culture.

Klychko has received a significant advance payment from the electorate, but it remains to be seen how he and his party pay it back. He supports liberal-democratic ideas and insists on the need for a complete renewal of Ukrainian political life but, at the same time, avoids harsh rhetoric and personal attacks. This might be a signal not only to his supporters and allies but also to rivals, at least those who are tired and frustrated with current politics, unrestrained greed and lawlessness of the “Family,” and the increasing international isolation of the country. In one of Udar’s ads, a rapper sings about the kind of president Ukraine really needs. At present we are electing MPs, but the song sounds like another suggestion on how to solve the problem: 2015.

 

Playing the Identity Card

Mykola Riabchuk

If one observes a significant number of politicians talking about the “protection of Russian language” and “closer ties with Russia,” one can be sure that an election campaign in Ukraine is in full swing. The goal of the rhetoric is not only to mobilize the numerous Russophile / Sovietophile electorate in the densely populated industrialized South East. Another goal is to send a proper signal to Kremlin and hook its powerful political, economic and propagandistic support. In a country divided almost equally between pro-Western and pro-Russian parts, anything that can tip the balance is readily employed.

The identity issue is strongly infused in Ukrainian politics, and language is merely part of it. Its role is primarily symbolical since virtually everybody in Ukraine has some command of both Ukrainian and Russian, and definitely everybody understands both languages. Conversation where one person speaks Russian and the other one speaks Ukrainian is not unusual, both in private or public spheres such as TV, and parliament or government offices. It is not the issue of communication actually, that causes the rift but a matter of attitude: either respectful or scornful. For years, Ukrainian was the language of the despised majority – enslaved peasants of tsarist nobleman or kolkhoz bosses. The more advanced, urbanized, educated world spoke Russian. This left a heavy imprint of superiority on one part of the population and inferiority on the other.

Today, the empathy with Ukrainian entails a whole set of attitudes toward the colonial past and national liberation, historical heroes and villains, symbols and narratives. Within this mindset, Russia is the main “Other” from which Ukrainians should decouple and emancipate, whereas Europe is the main “Us,” the civilizational space where Ukrainians presumably “always belonged” and now should “return.” The antithetical attitude stands typically for colonialism denial and normalization of all its legacies. The past is considered as the history of Russian-Ukrainian brotherhood rather than domination, Russification is seen as a natural process rather than a result of specific policies, and the West is perceived as the main “Other,” whereas Russia and all the post-Soviet space is the main “Us.” It is not ethnicity, language, political preferences or regional belonging that divide Ukrainians but, rather, values and attitudes, even though a significant correlation between all these markers can be easily found.

This leads to another Ukrainian paradox. On the one hand, as opinion surveys reveal, the language issue per se stands very low on the list of people’s concerns, far behind unemployment, poverty, criminality, and corruption that top the list. Yet, at the same time, nothing divides Ukrainians so much and sparks such heated debates as identity-related issues. This tempts politicians to play the language card, which is an easy task since no efforts to solve the real bread-and-butter issues are required in this case. It is sufficient to advertise themselves as “our bad boys” with the only virtue of being “ours.”

Ukraine is heading towards parliamentary elections scheduled by the end of October, and the Ukrainian language has already fallen prey to a highly unscrupulous election campaign. Back in July, shortly after the UEFA cup competition ended in Kyiv, the Ukrainian parliament passed the bill “On the fundamentals of the national language policy.” The document stipulates that any of 18 “regional and minority” languages spoken by 10 (and more) percent of the people in a certain administrative region can be used in that region as the “official” language alongside Ukrainian.

In fact, the law cares about only one language, Russian, which, ironically, does not need any protection since it dominates nearly all the territory and virtually all the spheres of public life in Ukraine. By the same token, one may protect English in Ireland or Spanish in Peru. The main goal of the document is not to secure the right of the Russophone citizens to use Russian since such a right is enshrined in Ukraine’s Constitution and in the 1989 “Law on Languages.” The main goal is to secure the right of post-Soviet bureaucracy not to learn and to use Ukrainian under any circumstances. No provisions require service for Ukrainophones in Ukrainian, or the use of Russian alongside Ukrainian rather than instead of it. The law gives a free hand to state officials to choose the language of work at their convenience, regardless of preferences of individual citizens, hence there is little doubt what the traditionally Russian-speaking and Soviet-thinking bureaucracy will choose.

Even though the sponsors of the new law refer to the Western experience of bilingualism, neither Finland nor Switzerland is a relevant analogue here. Rather, it is Belarus where a similar Soviet-style law and hypocritical “laissez-faire” policy have already transformed Belarusian speakers into second-class citizens and brought the Belarusian language to the verge of extinction. A similar law in Ukraine evoked very critical comments from the expert community, NGOs, the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities, and the Venice Commission. Its letter in many cases contradicts the Ukrainian constitution, its spirit runs against the relative balance of intergroup interests, and the way it was rubber-stamped in the parliament is outrageous since deputies considered no conclusions of the respective parliamentary committees or amendments discussed, and many procedural technicalities were violated.

The further irony of the story is that the controversial law, as new surveys reveal, brought the dominant Party of Regions very little electoral gain. Analysts wonder whether this step was another miscalculation of the provincial elite, unable to grasp the complex reality and predict the inevitable backfire and various side effects – something that also happened in 2010 when the Black Sea Fleet base was conceded to Russia for virtually nothing, or last year when former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko was imprisoned. Others argue, however, that this is a strategic move aimed at systemic emasculation of Ukrainian identity and, thereby, weakening the power base of the Orange opponents.

Both explanations may hold some truth but the main goal of the language law seems to be highly manipulative. It targets both supporters and opponents in the sense that it introduces false agenda into the election campaign. It shifts attention from the bread-and-butter issues on which the incumbents, with their disastrous social and economic policies, have little to say, toward issues concerning which any trickster and demagogue can pretend to be a “Great Leader.” Part of this plan is to make the opposition play this game: to defend language rather than the rule of law, and to fight remote Russia and its mythical “fifth column” rather than the real cheaters and robbers that run the country. Back in 2004, the Ukrainian people were victorious in a battle against the corrupt regime precisely because they rejected this false agenda and fought for fair elections and human dignity, for justice and decency, rather than language and other identity issues, however important they might be eventually. It remains to be seen whether the government’s manipulative strategies will be more successful this time.

 

DUPING THE PUSSY-CATS

Mykola Riabchuk

The last hopes some Ukrainians harbored for president’s veto over the highly divisive language bill, faded away on August 8, after Viktor Yanukovych signed it into law http://www.president.gov.ua/news/24960.html.

The result was largely predictable since the promotion of Russian language – at the cost of Ukrainian, as many critics opine – was a cornerstone of Yanukovych’s 2004 and 2010 presidential campaigns as well as of his Sovietophile Party of Regions. The propagandistic materials leaked from the party headquarters before the bill was even approved reveal a key role assigned to the language law by the party spin-doctors in the pending parliamentary elections campaign. And the brutal, extremely unscrupulous, and illegitimate way the bill was pushed through the parliament proves that the stakes are too high for the Party of Regions and, apparently, for the president.

Therefore, it was rather naïve to expect that the president would destroy what his team had been building so ruthlessly, breaching various laws and dismissing procedural subtleties. The calculation looks simple: whatever the president and his party do, they will not garner support from the democratic, Ukrainophile, and pro-European part of society. So, the main task is to mobilize the traditional, Sovietophile part of the electorate, which would probably never vote for the “democrats” perceived as “nationalists” and “Western hacks,” but may also reject the “Regionals” because of dissatisfaction with their disastrous social and economic policies. Some protest votes would probably benefit the Regionals’ satellites: the Communists on the virtual left and Natalia Korolevska’s “Avanti Ukraine!” in the quasi-liberal “center.” Still, the problem of mobilizing the Regionals’ core electorate remains topical since many of those people may simply ignore the elections, facilitating thereby the chances of the opposition.

The estimated size of the Sovietophile electorate in Ukraine is about 40%. This does not comprise a majority but the Party of Regions has good reason to believe that the half of the parliament elected from the territorial districts (not from the party lists) will bring them the much-needed majority thanks to the so-called independents. Most of them ultimately appear very dependent on the incentives or intimidation or both from the authorities and usually end-up in the pro-government camp.

The plot of the “Language Bill” was essentially clear but some dramatic devices were invoked to create an effective atmosphere of suspense and intrigue. First, there was last year’s precedent when the law on official use of the Soviet red flags was passed and even signed by the president but cancelled eventually by the hyper-loyalist constitutional court. (This actually may happen again but probably only after the parliamentary elections. The abandoned law would not bring Yanukovych much love and gratitude from Ukrainophiles anyway but would certainly give him an additional trump-card for some manipulative games in the future – something that his predecessor Leonid Kuchma understood perfectly).

Secondly, the head of the parliament Volodymyr Lytvyn refused to sign the bill citing multiple violations of the procedure http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2012/07/4/6967984. But his resignation was not accepted by the parliament and he was ultimately forced to comply, possibly blackmailed by the “Regionals” because of his alleged involvement in the Gongadze affair http://news.liga.net/ua/news/politics/707846-litvin_p_dpisav_skandalniy_zakon_pro_movi.htm.

Thirdly, the professional “doves” in Yanukovych’s team strained every sinew to convey to the public the president’s deep concern with the le controversies and his sincere desire to find a reasonable compromise that would not harm the Ukrainian language. Maryna Stavniychuk, his adviser, went so far as to recognize unequivocally that “the law was passed with flagrant violations of the articles 47, 116-122 and 130 of procedural statute (регламент) of the parliament, and many of its provisions contradicted the respective paragraphs of the Ukrainian Constitution and international documents ratified by Ukraine, including the European Charter of Regional and Minority Languages”http://obozrevatel.com/politics/16482-umovna-movna-krapka.htm. Moreover, Viktor Yanukovych himself recognized the controversial character of the law, referring to it as a crude document “splitting society” and therefore requiring “some improvements.”

And finally, on the very eve of the signing of the bill, President Yanukovych summoned a number of what still is called in Soviet newspeak “representatives of intelligentsia” to his summer residence in the Crimea to get their first-hand opinion on the hot issue. Next day the bill was signed into law to the great shock of the “representatives,” who justifiably considered themselves “tricked like kittens.” (The phrase became a popular description of the Party of Regions’ behavior after its informal parliamentary “director” Mykhaylo Chchetov used it boastfully to explain how they had cheated the opposition when pushing through the bill against all procedural requirements: “Мы их развели, как котят.” Remarkably, the Russian word “razvesti” – to sucker somebody – comes from the criminal jargon openly favored by the dominant Donetsk clan) http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2012/07/3/6967926.

To sweeten the pill, the president ordered the government to create an ad hoc working group that would elaborate proper changes to the law, with a stated goal to “ensure the full-fledged functioning of the Ukrainian language in all spheres of social life over the entire territory of the country.” This belongs next to the initial intention of the document to “guarantee the free development and use of other mother tongues of Ukrainian citizens” http://www.president.gov.ua/documents/14941.html.  Raisa Bohatyriova, the deputy prime minister in charge of humanitarian issues, was assigned to head the group, while the president’s guests, a.k.a. “representatives of intelligentsia,” were invited to participate in the deliberations. Ironically, the same offer was made also to the bill’s sponsors, Messrs. Kivalov and Kolesnichenko – a decision that some Ukrainian journalists declared was rather like asking Himmler and Goebbels to work on a law of de-Nazification.

The excessive demonization of two petty swindlers and opportunists is hardly appropriate but the metaphor is actually not about ideological similarity. It refers primarily to the intolerant, aggressive, and arrogant approach of these two persons and their use of political force to resolve any issue that requires a dialogue and consensus building. Serhiy Kivalov was the cynical head of the Central Election Commission that falsified notoriously the 2004 presidential elections and provoked the popular uprising known as the “Orange Revolution.” Today, he reportedly owns the TV channel “Academia,” a source of pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian propaganda, with a flagship program “Background” full of unrestrained innuendos and overt propaganda of hatred http://rutube.ru/tracks/5357980.html.

Vadym Kolesnichenko, the other self-professed promoter of European charters and values in Ukraine, has a similar reputation as a professional crusader against “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism.” Since Soviet times, the term has been used exactly like “Zionism,”i.e. to denigrate all things Ukrainian and to criminalize any vestiges of national identity beyond ethnography. Kolesnichenko’s fame in the parliament is based primarily on his pugilism, parading with Russian state symbols, and making disparaging remarks about Ukrainian language and culture. A dense cloud of scandals accompanies his activity. Within the few past months, he managed to steal Timothy Snyder’s article from the New York Review of Books for his own “antinationalistic” collection http://news.liga.net/news/politics/669428-professor_yelskogo_universiteta_vozmushchen_postupkom_kolesnichenko.htm, to organize “mass approval” for his draft bill by forging “letters of support” from various academic and minority institutions http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2012/05/23/6965117, and to falsify quotations and references in the explanatory notes to the document he submitted with Mr. Kivalov http://www.pravda.com.ua/columns/2012/07/30/6969744.

Perhaps the best characterization of this provocateur-at-large comes from his 2009 speech in the parliament where he lobbied for another “antinationalistic” bill: “On banning the rehabilitation and heroizing of fascist collaborators of 1933-1945.” To make his propagandistic speech more appealing to the fellow-MPs and especially for the general public, he embellished dry bureaucratic formulas with some personal details. At one point he referred not only to the UN documents and Nuremberg court decisions but also, as stated in the official stenogram, to the “bright memory of millions of Ukrainians who perished in their fight against fascism and bright memory of my father who burnt in a tank in Belarus defending the Soviet Motherland from the German-fascist occupants”” http://www.pravda.com.ua/columns/2012/07/30/6969744.

The only problem with the credibility of this speech (and Mr. Kolesnichenko in general) is that the speaker was born in 1958, roughly 15 years after his father reportedly perished in Belarus. (One may recollect here a reputed similar statement by Aleksander Lukashenko who was also impassioned so much by his own rhetoric that forgot he was born seven years after the war and, moreover, had actually never heard anything about his father).

Now one may guess how the “kittens”, a.k.a. “representatives of the Ukrainian intelligentsia,” would cooperate with the two very peculiar personages on the expected improvements to the law that has been absolutely lawless – illegal and illegitimate – in its spirit and letter, causes and effects, inception and delivery. My bet is that the crusaders might tone down their Ukrainophobic zeal on the boss’s orders; the “representatives” would receive from the president soothing promises of further support for Ukrainian language and culture; the law would be amended to meet (more or less) provisions of the constitution; so that little will change in today’s ambiguous situation, which is determined primarily not by laws but by the authorities’ goodwill and political expedience. All this will happen, however, after the elections, when logic suggests Yanukovych will backtrack a little bit in order to have more space for the eventual political bargaining and maneuvering.

Today expediency means appeasing supporters and undermining opponents. Kivalov, Kolesnichenko, and Chechetov accomplished the first part of the project, while the “representatives of intelligentsia” helped to complete the other part. First, they ran, at the president’s whim, to his dacha and, second, they got virtually nothing. To enhance the humiliation, the information was leaked that all of these affluent citizens flew at the cost of Bohdan Havrylyshyn, a Swiss-Ukrainian businessman, fully in line with the Regionals’ propaganda that the Ukrainian language issue is merely a Diaspora hobbyhorse http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2012/08/7/6970338.

Even though most of the “representatives” are not directly connected to the political opposition (actually most of them have successfully cooperated with both Soviet and post-Soviet authorities), all of them represent, in the popular mind, the “Ukrainian party,” i.e., the opposition as it is broadly understood. To discredit the opposition on the eve of elections is definitely a favored policy, but probably even more important for the regime is to involve as many public figures as possible in its illegal activity. This helps to normalize things abnormal and legitimize the illegitimate. The cheaters become the partners; the swindlers assume the role of respectable statesmen. The story may resemble the classical parable about Faust and Mephistopheles. The only problem is that the Ukrainian Mephistos are merely petty crooks, and the Ukrainian Fausts are merely dull and insipid collaborators.

[Editor's note: the views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Stasiuk Program for the Study of Contemporary Ukraine]