Russia, Ukraine - Spot the Difference
The Price of the Question
Yulia Timoshenko’s long way to her second prime minister term shows in what ways Ukraine is similar to Russia (and these features are intrinsic to Eastern Slavic politics) and where it is totally different.
It is different because the Orange Revolution gained the upper hand in Ukraine. It did because eighteen months later both Yulia Timoshenko and President Yushchenko found themselves losers and it was Prime Minister Yanukovich, who had been crashed in Kyiv’s Maidan, who celebrated the victory. The main aim of that revolution was to build a democracy. And revolutions are known to eat up their children.
Ukraine is different from Russia as it is the only CIS country trying to build a country where the president is not the main person or at least not the main one in everything. There is also Moldova, the world’s only parliamentary republic where the president is the main person. But post-Communist transition has given rise to even more ironic things.
But Ukraine is similar to Russia because local politicians hate giving away their power as much as Russians do. That’s why there were three rounds of the presidential election in 2004, months-long talks to shape governmental coalitions in 2006 and 2007, the early election and multi-page cover-up guidelines for the majority coalition. And that is why MPs are threatening leave the Rada and delegitimize it with the losing party blocking the rostrum again on Thursday. Like in Russia, politicians in Ukraine are playing games with no consideration for their voters. They know that people still haven’t learnt how to punish those who got lost in the game in the next election.
Dividing powers between the president and parliament-elected prime minister is a difficult task. We saw last year Messrs. Viktor Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovich pulling the blanket of powers trying to show who the biggest Victor is. Only 25 years ago such seemingly solid democracy as France had as many fears about a conflict between the right-wing premier and the left president. But they went fine. They learnt. Yet, France’s political culture had a longer experience of democratic governance.
It looks like Yulia Timoshenko will become prime minister after all. But predicting how long she will last in the post is as hopeless as predicting a prime minister term in Russia. There is a difference, though. Ukraine has been feverish for the past three years but its economy is growing faster than Russia’s although it does not export gas and oil but imports it (with siphoning off sometimes). It means Ukrainians have learnt how to work and make money without looking at who is sitting in which office. Or, it could be that officials desperate to stay in power just have no time to pester businessmen.
More importantly, Ukraine’s experience proves an old truism. Democracy is not an order when all problems get solved but it is when bad rulers can be ousted.
Boris Makarenko, first deputy director general of the Center for Political Technologies
All the Article in Russian as of Dec. 07, 2007
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