Moscow News
www.MN.Ru
February 1-7, 2006
The Orange Boomerang
By Sergei Kiselev
The majority of Ukraine's population is disappointed in their President, especially by the fact that the leader of the Orange Revolution has been implicated in a number of corruption scandals
Analysts believe that Viktor Yanukovich's political comeback is the result not so much of his successes as Viktor's Yushchenko's failures. Although he is often portrayed abroad as a democratic reformer striving to bring Ukraine closer to Europe and the United States, his reputation suffers at home. "He has a Gorbachev Syndrome," The New York Times wrote. "He looks better abroad than he does at home."
Cronyism
There seem to have been fewer corruption scandals during Leonid Kuchma's entire 10-year presidency than during Yushchenko's first year in office. All reforms promised by the Orange Revolution leader probably began to falter the moment he filled Cabinet and gubernatorial (regional government) positions with the godparents of his children (Petro Poroshenko, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council; Oksana Bilozir, the minister of culture and tourism); business cronies (David Zhvania, the minister for emergencies; Oleksandr Tretyakov, the president's top aide; Yevhen Chervonenko, the minister of transport and communications), and relatives (Yuriy Pavlenko, the minister of family, youth and sport; Yaroslav Yushchenko, Viktor Yushchenko's nephew, deputy governor of the Kharkiv region). This is just a partial list.
Yushchenko has failed to separate business from politics - something that he vowed to do as an aspiring presidential candidate. When they secured high-level state and government positions, businessmen, who had been harassed by Kuchma for supporting Yushchenko, immediately began to make up lost ground. The first corruption scandal erupted days after a new Cabinet was appointed, when Justice Minister Roman Zvarich threatened to resign unless the ban on the re-export of gasoline (his family business) was lifted.
Next, it turned out that Roman Zvarich, a former U.S. citizen, had never in fact been a professor of law in the United States nor did he even have a degree in law. Nonetheless, he retained his post. Then it was established that sugar prices in Ukraine had gone up because Petro Poroshenko, who was in charge of national security and in control of a large chunk of the candy industry, was not interested to see the import of low-cost sugar cane. Incidentally, all of these people are now on the electoral list of the Our Ukraine bloc that is close to Yushchenko.
Ukraine was also shaken by the furor created by the hard-hitting exposes in the media alleging that Yushchenko's son Andriy drives a $160,000 BMW and frequently slaps down rolls of $100 bills at trendy restaurants. Asked about this at a news conference, Yushchenko said that he advised his son to "find that restaurant check ... shove this check under that journalist's snout and then sue." Then Oleksandr Zinchenko, Yushchenko's former chief of staff, caused a big stir by alleging corruption within Yushchenko's inner circle.
Timoshenko's Legwork
On the first anniversary of the Orange Revolution, Yushchenko reported to the Ukrainian parliament on the implementation of his "Ten Steps toward the People" election program. Local reporters quipped that those 10 steps had been made with Yulia Tymoshenko's feet: Reducing the term of compulsory draft service in the armed forces to one year and tripling financial support for enlisted men; raising pensions to the countrywide subsistence level; doubling teachers' salaries; doubling allowances for orphans; increasing childbirth allowances 17 times (now young women will get more than $1,500 per each child they give birth to); and finally, re-privatization of the Krivorizhstal metal plant, which was bought dirt cheap by Leonid Kuchma's son-in-law, causing the country a loss of about $5 billion - one-fifth of last year's state budget.
An experienced politician, Yulia Tymoshenko managed not only to make the "presidential steps" but also ensured that the Ukrainian people remember to whom they owe the real improvement in their living standards. Experts believe that this is the main factor in Yushchenko's declining ratings amid the growing popularity of the "iron lady."
It is true that the Ukrainians' attitude toward their president has also been affected by the latest round of rumors and speculation that the opposition timed for the upcoming parliamentary election: e.g., when he became president, Yushchenko worked hard to hush up the investigation of his purported poisoning; that Boris Berezovsky funded his election campaign in 2004, also writing a version of his inauguration address; and that Yushchenko's mother-in-law traveled from Philadelphia to Kiev for the inauguration ceremony on a charter flight paid for by businessman Dmitry Firtash, the right-hand man of Semen Mogilevich who is on the FBI's wanted list, but recently took part in discussing the Russian-Ukrainian gas agreement in Moscow.
In short, the Orange boomerang that Yushchenko threw at corrupt officials in the form of his "All Felons Will Be Jailed!" calls never hit anyone. As it turns out, only Yushchenko was hit.
Gas Trouble
The last straw came with the release of a report that the natural-gas agreement between Gazprom, Naftohaz of Ukraine, and the Ros-UkrEnergo utility, unfavorable for Ukraine, was mediated by Petrohaz, a company registered in the United Arab Emirates and purportedly owned by Petro Yushchenko, the president's elder brother. It was reported that two hours before the agreement was signed, RosUkr-Energo had wired the company $53 million through Raiffeisen Bank. It is also noteworthy that the Ura-inform building, a private news agency that reported details of the deal, was gutted by a suspicious fire the same night.
It only remains to be added that the likeness of an elderly and gloomy Taras Shevchenko on the 100-hryvnya bill will soon be replaced with an image of the poet in his younger days against the backdrop of the heroine of his poem Katerina. Some people say that this picture is amazingly reminiscent of Viktor Yushchenko as an undergraduate, while Katerina recalls the Ukrainian first lady, Katerina Chumachenko.
OPINION
Konstantin Zatulin, director, the Institute of CIS Studies:
The people who carried out the Orange Revolution simply jeopardized the process of nation-building. After all, the real goal of the Orange Revolution - as last year showed - is not democracy, but "Ukraine above all" and a final separation from Russia. For all of last year, the "Orange" ruling authorities divided Ukraine, not consolidated it. Can one really hope for reconciliation and compromise if the president and his associates continue to divide the country into "outlaw" Ukraine (the east and south) and "true" Ukraine that wears national costume and practices wild-hive beekeeping and wood-carving, as does Yushchenko on New Year's eve.
Today, the "Orange" rulers, despaired of winning a victory in an open and fair fight, are trying to wear Boris Yeltsin (c. 1993) shoes. Forced to assume failure in the upcoming parliamentary election, Yushchenko has mounted an attack on the legislative branch of government. He insists on scaling down political reform and would also like to dissolve parliament. The search for new pretexts to escalate tensions and up the ante in relations with Russia well fits into the establishment's aggressive style.
Russia's objectives should be clear: To prevent Ukraine's consolidation as a state that is hostile to Russia, under the influence of forces in opposition to Russia both within and outside Ukraine, thus preventing Ukraine from turning into another Poland and avoiding the return of the Time of Troubles.
Russia's task is to help promote democracy in Ukraine. Federalism, Jefferson used to say, is just a territorial form of democracy. Meanwhile, Russian as the second state language in Ukraine is a form of national democracy. This is what the main political struggles in Ukraine will center around in 2006.
Viacheslav Igrunov, director, the International Institute for Humanitarian-Political Studies:
The Orange Revolution inspired many Ukrainians, giving them confidence in their right to decide their country's future. This does not only apply to those who came to Independence Square. Just as in the west of the country, people in southern and eastern Ukraine realized that their will, their choice could really make a difference. And although during the past year, popular support for the new ruling authorities has halved, the population's civic activism is still remarkably high for a post-Soviet state.
Western countries, which hailed Yushchenko's victory, opened new opportunities for Ukraine. The United States graduated it from the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, while the EU recognized Ukraine as a market economy, indicating that as of now, it sees it as a democratic state. It would, however, be naive to think that these changes have put Ukraine on the home stretch for democracy. Politically motivated dismissals and lawsuits, the declining efficiency of the administrative apparatus, and the reemerging trend to crowd out Russian - all of this points to some serious contradictions in the ongoing political processes. As for the scale of problems caused by a worsening of its relations with Russia, it has yet to be fully appreciated.
Still, Ukraine has not made any irreversible moves. There is a chance that it will resume a special relationship with Russia, using cooperation to modernize its economy and society. In his state-of-the-nation address, the Ukrainian president said: "It is now time for an 'economy of knowledge,' when intellectual resources bring far greater benefits than do natural resources." This is also true for Russia. Yet once Ukraine, which has shed the illusions about its huge natural resource potential, now has an opportunity to make a breakthrough into a postindustrial world, leaving oil-dependent Russia far behind.