Opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko (center), Our Ukraine party leader Vyacheslav Kyrylenko (right), and opposition leader Yury Lutsenko (left), greet supporters during a rally in Kiev on Saturday, March 31, 2007. Tens of thousands of demonstrators called on Ukraine's president to defeat a challenge from the rival prime minister by dissolving parliament and calling new elections, a move that could throw the former Soviet republic into crisis.
Photo: AP
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Pick a Square
// Yushchenko and Yanukovych Supporters Take to the Streets in Kiev
Enough protestors to fill two town squares flooded central Kiev on Saturday as the standoff between the country's two competing parliamentary factions intensified. While a crowd of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych's supporters beseeched Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko not to dissolve parliament, "orange" opposition demonstrators demanded that the president step up to the plate to resolve a deadlock in the Ukrainian government. Mr. Yushchenko is wavering, but he has promised to decide the fate of the parliament today.
Tug of War over the Squares
For the coalitions in the Ukrainian parliament, last Saturday was an excellent opportunity to measure the strengths of their respective fan bases. Over the weekend, central Kiev was divided into two opposing camps, separated from each other by only a few hundred meters: one occupied European Square, while the other camped out on Independence Square. The two sides were nominally separated by a clutch of policemen, but the police appeared to have little interest in preventing people from wandering from the "orange" camp over to the "white-and-blue" camp and back again.
The organizers of the two camps were particularly concerned with making sure that their politically-active fellow citizens felt free to visit both sides: the scheduled program of events concluded on European Square at around five o'clock, and only then did things really kick off next door on Independence Square.
Public transportation brought people in waves to Kiev's central squares throughout the morning on Saturday. Buses from the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine fed the crowd on European Square, while buses from the west disgorged their passengers on Independence Square. The mood among the prime minister's supporters on European Square was cheerful and even optimistic. Light blue flags fluttered above the square as the prime minister addressed the crowd.
"You have a right to your position, to your point of view. But we must do everything calmly! With goodwill and with love! Yes or no?" exhorted Viktor Yanukovych. "I summon you all to peace and unity. Only that can be our future. Unity opens the path to the future for the Ukrainian people. Everything else is impossible."
The demonstrators appeared to entertain no fear whatsoever that the parliament will be dissolved. No one on European Square believed that the president will take such a step, a view that the prime minister was eager to inculcate in his supporters.
"If the president professes the principles of democracy and he supports them, he should know [democracy's] fundamental principles," Mr. Yanukovych reasoned. Upon finishing his speech, he briefly disappeared under a hail of silver confetti as the crowd, encouraged from the stage, began to chant his name.
At the same time orange flags, many of them faded reminders of the events of December 2004, were being unfurled on neighboring Independence Square. There the mood was tense and even alarmed, stoked by former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko's bellicose speech.
"Who gave them the right to join the Common Economic Space (an economic union of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine organized in May 2004), in which Ukraine will get only 11% of the pie, versus 80% for another country? Who gave these politicians the right to hand our national sovereignty over to another Soviet Union? We could wake up one morning and see that we're already in the Common Economic Space!" she warned.
"If we do not succeed in getting the parliament dissolved, in 2011 there won't be any elections. The Party of the Regions (Yanukovych's faction) will take 101% in every district, every region, and they will say that's the way it was," cautioned Vyacheslav Kirilenko, the leader of the pro-president Our Ukraine faction.
In this camp, no one appeared to doubt the imminent dissolution of the parliament.
"When it's spring outside, the buds are bursting forth, and we need to burst open the Upper Rada (the Ukrainian parliament) as well, so that a clean Ukraine can be born, like a star on the horizon of the world," urged Yulia Tymoshenko from the stage.
As in the neighboring camp, every speaker made sure to mention the president. Unlike Mr. Yanukovych, however, Ms. Tymoshenko took the opportunity to make the case that Viktor Yushchenko is obliged to dissolve the Rada.
"The president has not the right but the obligation to smash this zradu (a play on words substituting the word "Rada" with "zrada," the Ukrainian word for treason). Who is in favor of calling early elections today? Raise your hands!" she cried. "And who is in favor of falling into the same trap for the sixth time and continuing to negotiate?"
After the leaders had finished speaking, the audience's attention wandered, and most people left to stroll around Kiev. Buses began to ferry people back to their respective hometowns. Meanwhile, the politicians squabbled over whose demonstration had attracted more participants. The Party of Regions claimed that 60,000 people had shown up for the speeches on European Square, while pro-president National Self-Defense party leader Yury Lutsenko produced a head count of 200,000 on Independence Square. The Ukrainian Interior Ministry reported that each camp had attracted 30,000 supporters.
Tug of War over the President
Both sides acknowledged that the president will have the last word in whether the Rada will be dissolved or not. So far President Yushchenko has been clinging to his favorite strategy: he criticizes Viktor Yanukovych and his "national unity coalition" (the Party of the Regions, the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, and various deserters from Yushchenko's camp), while simultaneously demonstrating his readiness to negotiate with the prime minister, his eternal adversary.
The president's hopelessly divided position was on display on Saturday: "I am ready to take the step of signing a decree to dissolve parliament. I myself do not need to be convinced," he threatened, and promised to begin holding consultations with the leaders of the parliamentary factions on Monday. According to Ukraine's constitution, such consultations are a necessary preamble to the dissolution of the parliament. However, the president has also openly stated that the leaders of the factions could change his mind.
At a meeting on Saturday of the pro-president Our Ukraine party, the president enumerated the basic demands that the parliament and the government must meet in order to dissuade him from dissolving the Rada. According to President Yushchenko, work on a constitutional court must be resumed, politicization of the law enforcement services must stop, and a law concerning the cabinet of ministers that would curtail the power of the prime minister should be reviewed. Finally, Viktor Yanukovych and his allies are requested to cease their "anti-constitutional individual practice of forming coalitions in the parliament"; i.e., the prime minister's faction should stop poaching deputies from the "orange" factions of Our Ukraine and the Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko. Flight from the ranks of the opposition has become epidemic recently, and as a result the number of Mr. Yanukovych's supporters in parliament has grown from 238 to 260 deputies, out of a total of 450 members of the Rada. The prime minister, of course, has no intention of stopping while he is ahead: in fact, he is threatening to undermine the "orange" parties to the point where their coalition loses its constitutional majority of 300 deputies.
A source in President Yushchenko's administration told Kommersant that the odds on the president choosing either option are approximately 50/50. The events of last weekend show that he is being squeezed between two opposing forces, one of which is pushing the president towards the radical step of dissolving the parliament and calling early elections, while the other is attempting to maintain the status quo. On the one side is the trio of Yulia Tymoshenko, Yury Lutsenko, and Vyacheslav Kirilenko, who look upon the other side's champion, Viktor Yanukovych, as their sworn enemy.
The moderate opposition is represented by the "old orange guard," headed by Pyotr Poroshenko. Recently he and other political veterans have come close to completely losing control of Our Ukraine, making them fearful of early elections that could cost them their seats in the Rada, especially if the new democratic faction ends up being led by their old adversary Yulia Tymoshenko. "Under Kirilenko Our Ukraine has turned into Tymoshenko's puppet," said one of the representatives of Mr. Poroshenko's camp. "You have to understand that they will follow her directions to the letter, but she's just hungry for power." The "orange veterans" are eager for the spectacle in central Kiev to stop, the troika of Tymoshenko, Lutsenko, and Kirilenko to go down in defeat, and the parliament to continue its work unhindered. "If the president has grounds at some later point to dissolve the parliament, he will have all of the arguments to back it up. But right now there are no legal grounds to dissolve the parliament," said Mr. Poroshenko recently.
Viktor Yushchenko's circle professes ignorance of the president's intentions and is preparing for all possible outcomes. "On one hand, the president does not like what Tymoshenko and Lutsenko are pushing him to do. Our lawyers dispute whether the Rada can be dissolved, and their opinions are split," said an official in Mr. Yushchenko's administration. ""There are no constitutional norms permitting it. But there are concrete laws that have been broken numerous times by Yanukovych's supporters in forming the 'coalition of national unity.' So if the president dissolves the parliament, there will be no exceptional violation of the law per se." However, the president's advisors cannot neglect to take into account the fact that, if the Rada is dissolved, Viktor Yanukovych will undoubtedly complain to the constitutional court. If the court then rules against the president, that would be tantamount to impeachment. That possibility may be even more frightening for Viktor Yushchenko than the accusations that could be made against the government by Yulia Tymoshenko in her next speech on Kiev's central square.
Mikhail Zygar and Vladimir Solovyov
All the Article in Russian as of Apr. 02, 2007
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