Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych in Kiev on April 3, 2007.
Photo: Alexander Techinsky
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Orange Democrats Leave the Square to Yanukovych
// Fate of Second Orange Revolution Looks Set to be Decided in May 27 Elections
Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and his coalition failed yesterday to convince President Viktor Yushchenko to repeal his decree dissolving the country's legislature. The president appears to be holding firm on the course towards early elections. Unlike in the fall of 2004, this time around the "orange democrats" have decided against massive street protests: they hope to decide the fate of the second Orange Revolution not in Kiev's central square but in the voting booths on May 27.
"A Combination of a Harp and a Meat Grinder"
Viktor Yushchenko's decree dissolving Ukraine's 450-seat legislature, the Upper Rada, and ordering new parliamentary elections saw the light yesterday morning only in the pages of a special publication of the Ukrainian President's Bulletin, which was printed in a limited run of only 3,000 copies. The official newspapers Holos Ukrayiny and Uryadovy Kuryer did not print the decree. Nevertheless, the decree's public appearance means that it has gone into force.
Decree or no decree, however, many of the dismissed deputies showed up early in the morning to take their seats in the Rada. Those present were exclusively members of the prime minister's ruling coalition.
The first to address the assembled deputies was the prime minister himself, who swore that, despite the president's decree, the government and the Rada would continue to work as normal until the Constitutional Court returned its verdict on the legality of the president's decision. The prime minister called on the president to rethink his actions and to return to negotiations. He was seconded by Taras Chornovil, a fellow Party of the Regions member, who maintained that the Regionalists are ready to search for a compromise.
The comments that followed somewhat belied Mr. Chornovil's initial statement, however. Mr. Chornovil himself then apologized in absentia to ex-president Leonid Kuchma, with whom he once locked horns: "Leonid Danilovich, forgive me, I didn't think that we would birth monsters like Yushchenko and Tymoshenko. Compared to them, you are the leader of democracy."
Socialist deputy Alexander Baranivsky followed Mr. Chornovil to the speaker's podium to read a poem by an unknown author about Yulia Tymoshenko that calls the "orange princess" a "combination of a harp and a meat grinder." His colleagues in the Socialist Party, which stands to lose the most in the dissolution of the parliament (the party is unlikely to receive enough votes in an early election to retain any of its seats in the Rada), then attempted to channel the discussion towards the immediate launch of impeachment proceedings against the president.
For the time being, the Rada decided to contend with more pressing matters first. It has forbidden the government to set aside funds to hold new elections, stripped the current Central Elections Commission (TsIK) under Yaroslav Davydovich of its authority, and reappointed several former members of the commission who were fired at the end of 2004 for falsifying the results of the presidential elections.
However, the issue of impeachment did not stay off the table for long. Pausing on his way out of the parliament building, Viktor Yanukovych confidently told a crowd of supporters that "this step by the president was not only mistaken – it was directed against the state, against the Ukrainian people." He promised that the dissolution of the legislature will be met with the impeachment of the president.
The prime minister shook a few hands and set off across the street to the government building, where he spent part of last night at an emergency meeting. At the meeting, the Ukrainian government threw its lot in with the prime minister, resolving to view the president's decree dissolving the Rada as unconstitutional and forbidding all regional government entities to implement it. The cabinet has announced that it will submit only to the authority of the legislature.
That same night, the prime minister suffered his first setback when Foreign Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk and Defense Minister Anatoly Gritsenko, who were both appointed to their posts by the president, declined to support the government's decision. Mr. Gritsenko went so far as to announce that the armed forces "will act strictly according to the law and will follow the orders of the country's commander in chief, President Viktor Yushchenko."
At the door of the government building, Mr. Yanukovych turned back and blew a kiss to his supporters. In a message to the country yesterday, the prime minister claimed that there had been an attempt against Ukraine's constitutional system and that Viktor Yushchenko, in attempting to disband the legitimate parliament, wanted to "return to an authoritarian system of presidential power." Mr. Yanukovych again suggested that the president needs to "come to his senses."
The President's Plan
Viktor Yushchenko, however, is already beyond hearing the prime minister's advice. Instead, he has been diligently pursuing a strict course of action that appears to have been well thought out in advance and that incorporates all of the traditional rules of a struggle for power.
Yesterday morning Mr. Yushchenko met with TsIK head Yaroslav Davydovich, who assured the president that he is ready to successfully pull off special elections. The president then met with officials from the armed forces, including the leaders of the Defense Ministry, the Ukrainian Security Council, the Interior Ministry, and the federal border guards. The effectiveness of these meetings became obvious almost immediately: leaving a consultation with the president, acting Security Council chairman Valentyn Nalyvaychenko said that his department "will take all measures to ensure that the TsIK and other elections committees operate normally, and [it] is also ready to protect judges at all levels from pressure."
After such a statement, the president can rest easier about any future decisions that will be made by the TsIK and the courts. To solidify their reliability even further, yesterday the president named Mr. Nalyvaychenko and Oleksandr Kykhtenko, the commander of the troops attached to the Interior Ministry, to the National Security and Defense Council in place of Speaker of Parliament Oleksandr Moroz, a Socialist who is siding with the prime minister.
At high noon the Ukrainian president held a meeting with the ambassadors of the G8 countries. Mr. Yushchenko assured them that he will guarantee that free elections are held, and he invited them to participate in monitoring the elections. According to Mr. Yushchenko's administration, the ambassadors are treating the situation as an internal Ukrainian matter and did not offer to mediate between the two sides. So far only Russia is ready to assume that role, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced yesterday.
The event that everyone in Ukraine was awaiting with baited breath yesterday, however, was the meeting scheduled for 14:00 between the president and the prime minister. The meeting lasted for more than four hours, after which Viktor Yanukovych skirted the media by leaving the building through the back door. The prime minister went immediately to the government building and called a spokesperson to draft his address to the nation.
Mr. Yushchenko's administration told Kommersant yesterday that "the main issue that was discussed at the meeting was ensuring the thorough execution of the decree ordering early elections to the Rada." The president rejected the use of forceful measures as the situation unfolds and called the attempt to restore the previous composition of the TsIK "illegal" and "amoral," since "its complicity in tampering [with the elections returns] was acknowledged by the courts." Finally, he informed his opponent that "the government is not a political force" and thus should fulfill the president's decrees rather than taking shelter behind the decisions of the Rada.
And as if to confirm his words, Viktor Yushchenko annulled the resolution calling the presidential decree dissolving the Rada illegitimate, which was passed the night before by the government. Subsequently, all of Kiev began to whisper that everything will be decided on the city's central square, as in the fall of 2004.
Out of the Loop
Yesterday Kiev's main square was indeed filled with several thousand people, but this time they were supporters of the ruling coalition who throughout the day attempted to prove the mistakenness of the president's decision to dissolve the parliament.
"We are being offered Europe as an example of a place where dissolving the legislature is a usual affair. But there is no country in Europe where the president is as destabilizing a factor as ours is," said Transportation and Communications Minister Nikolai Rudkovsky, a Socialist, a bit frantically. "The president should be the father of the entire nation, not only of the opposition," echoed the next speaker.
The speeches from the party leaders attracted only weak interest from the majority of the crowd. Young people, who made up the core of the demonstrators, began to disperse across the square as evening fell. The demonstrators broke out drinks and chatted easily. Their main goal seemed to have been to hold the position that had previously been the domain of the orange democrats, particularly since several television channels had reported the day before that the party UNA-UNSO, which is part of the National Self-Defense movement headed by Yury Lutsenko, would be bringing a thousand people to Kiev to hold a demonstration in support of the dissolution of the legislature.
"That's some kind of nonsense, we're not bringing anyone anywhere. We are waiting for the legislature to begin implementing the legal decision of the president," maintained Igor Mazur, the head of the Kiev branch of UNA-UNSO.
Apparently Mr. Mazur was not dissembling, since this time the orange democrats have chosen a different tactic from the one that they employed to such effect in the fall of 2004: they have consciously handed over the central square to their opponents, while they themselves have begun preparing for the elections. "We are beginning a pre-election campaign," said Yulia Tymoshenko to Kommersant yesterday. "The longer the ruling coalition sits in the parliament, the less of a chance they have of getting into the new Rada," she said.
Ms. Tymoshenko called on her supporters to avoid mass demonstrations and said that her bloc had already formed a campaign headquarters headed by her top deputy in BYuT, Oleksandr Turchynov. The Our Ukraine party has also formed its own headquarters under the leadership of the party's head, Vyacheslav Kyrylenko.
Having consciously quit the central square, the orange democrats have left their white-and-blue opponents out of the loop, at least for now. For the fate of the second Orange Revolution looks set to be decided not on Kiev's square, but in the voting booths on May 27.
Gennady Sysoyev and Artyom Skoropadsky (Kiev)
All the Article in Russian as of Apr. 04, 2007
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