Teething troubles

Ukraine’s ‘Orange’ future was bright; now it’s uncertain.

“A very large percentage of people,” wrote Bertrand Russell, “really believe that the ills from which they suffer would be cured if a certain political party were in power.” At the time Russell was writing, what is now Ukraine was ruled over by a murderous madman for whom political parties were an unwelcome distraction; so much so, in fact, that he got rid of all of them that weren’t his.

Things have, thankfully, moved on a bit since Stalin’s day, to the extent that Russell’s words can now apply to post-Orange Revolution Ukraine as appositely as they did—and still do—to the quaint-sounding people of the “English-speaking world” about whom they were originally penned.

As a young country, electoral feeling in Ukraine is still finding its feet. Under the disreputable eye of Viktor Yanukovich, the country was not trusted to make its own way, so elections were rigged and dissenting voices were given a clip round the ear. Then came the revolution. It was colourful, it was euphoric, and it led to people—both on the streets of Kiev and in the newsrooms around the world—getting a little over-excited. Ukraine now appears to be moving into the next stage, one familiar to parents, regular revellers and watchers of Vauxhall adverts alike: the post-party come-down; Ukraine looks increasingly over-tired.

In the aftermath of the revolution, faith in the new President Viktor Yushchenko was understandably high. Here was a charismatic leader who had overturned a corrupt election result, survived a very public poisoning and looked to be ushering Ukraine into eastern-European Eden. However, having failed to deliver on a number of promises that helped hurl him into power, the public perception of Mr Yushchenko and his Orange Revolution allies moved from saviours to same-olds.

After being elected to ‘do something’ about the corruption that enveloped Ukraine’s heavy industry privatisation, subsequent actions, in a sense that they came at all, were seen by many as little more than score-settling and asset-stripping. The economy as a whole remains sluggish and blighted by accusations of corruption. This came as little surprise to those that remembered Mr Yushchenko’s previous fairly ineffective spell as prime minister, but to the people who had invested so much trust in him to turn things around, it was a major disappointment. Mr Yushchenko’s ‘man of the people’ image was further fractured when it was discovered that his son was parading around with a mobile phone worth about 400 times the average monthly wage.

When, in September 2005, Mr Yushchenko decided to sack Yulia Tymoshenko, the prime minister, and her entire parliament, less than a year after it was put in place, ‘revolution’ seemed to denote less a radical repudiation of the previous regime and more the process of going round in a circle.

A punishment to fit the crime?

Despite the rather sudden loss of momentum during the President’s tumultuous tenure, commentators should be wary of repeating their earlier mistakes. Just as the reported maelstrom of late 2004 was in fact more of a hearty wind, so we should resist from seeing the backlash as anything more than it actually is.

In the eyes of the voters, Mr Yushchenko failed to deliver. The voters responded by giving his ‘Our Ukraine’ party a hammering in the March 26 elections, placing it in third place, behind the ‘Regions of Ukraine’ party, led by the disgraced but rejuvenated Viktor Yanukovich and Mrs Tymoshenko’s eponymous bloc. But focusing on Mr Yushchenko’s ‘humiliation’ overlooks the fact that these elections were the freest in the country’s short history, conducted honestly and under the watchful eye of a free press.

This has left the President with a tough decision: who to appoint as Prime Minister. The combative Mrs Tymoshenko claims she is the only one who can lead a viable coalition. However, the former Orange allies haven’t got on so well since Mrs Tymoshenko was sacked as Prime Minister, and her own 2009 presidential ambitions have only exacerbated the split. Other members of Our Ukraine are antagonistic towards Mrs Tymoshenko because they don’t want to see the events of her last prime ministerial spell get a repeat showing.

Mrs Tymoshenko is also a very polarising figure: adored by the Ukrainian-speaking east, while detested by the Russian-speaking west. However, striking a deal with the alternative, Mr Yanukovich, would, Mrs Tymoshenko believes, be ‘political suicide’.

It is easy to understand why. Mr Yanukovich was the central villain of the revolution. He was a cheat and a liar, and a country rose up against his operating standards. Inviting him back to lead that same country would be seen by many of the already disillusioned Orange backers as the ultimate betrayal. However, opinions of Mr Yanukovich and his party’s pro-Russian leanings are also beginning to alter.

Like an MP that has to co-operate with the party leadership in order to be appointed to the next available safe seat, Ukraine, as the recent fiasco over gas supplies showed, remains remarkably reliant on Russia. To many Ukrainians, faced with the prospect of a quadrupling of gas prices, running away from Russia suddenly didn’t seem quite so appealing.

There may be trouble ahead

Eventually an agreement will be reached, not least because with some MPs having effectively paid up to 5 million dollars for their seats (and the accompanying legal immunity), they will be unwilling to risk too much. The most likely resolution is a (probably) unstable coalition of Our Ukraine with the Tymoshenko bloc, with Mrs Tymoshenko as the prime minister.

The resulting coalition may be unstable, but it will not be unsurprising. Politics in Ukraine is growing up. The very fact that Mr Yanukovich is playing the game differently is a sign of this. So is the fact that the oligarchs have noticed that they might well be able to make more money by going straight. Corruption isn’t dead, but it is down.

The extent to which an old regime is bad is often matched by the extent to which people think that the new one will be good. Unfortunately, one upshot of this is that nascent rulers can be hindered by their inability to make as much progress in government as they did in opposition, and the people can quickly lose faith. Ukraine now has a free parliamentary democracy. If it’s to grow up well, it needs realistic nurturing, not reactionary nagging.