Ukraine: In Between
What’s happening in Ukraine is natural for the stage of political development the country has found itself at. This stage is called electoral democracy. Having some traits of the power of the people, it still falls short of the accountability of mature democracy.
The voters determine the composition of governmental bodies, but they cannot influence the way politicians behave during their terms in office. Politicians have learned to compete openly, even getting keen on campaigns with all their adrenalin and unpredictable outcome, but they are not that good at the bureaucratic routine – be it work in the government or in the shadow cabinet.
You can’t hold another election today. President Yushchenko won’t dissolve the parliament for a second time within a year. Taking into consideration the low approval rating of his “Our Ukraine” Bloc, he can easily find himself a general without his parliamentary army. The Party of Regions has been seized with infightings. Its leading activists take posts in the “anti-national” government without being accountable to the party, which is to be explained to the voters actually. Even the rally queen Tymoshenko has nothing to compete for. On the one hand, she can’t reckon with anything more substantial than the post of the Prime Minister, on the other hand, voters can blame her for the inflation. Finally, you should keep in mind that the sponsors’ purses are not bottomless. Within three years and a half they have been emptied three times, and the presidential campaign is just around the corner.
But elections are necessary to make new “friends”. The thing is, the white-and-blue and the orange are reluctant to explain betrayal somehow, even when they call it “tactics.”
So the challenging and senseless odd-man-out game keeps on, with all its squabbles, putting spokes in the government’s wheel in the form of ban on privatization and land auctions, a show “Stop NATO!” with balloons and so on. These sometimes alternate with a bit more important and curious events like the election of the Mayor of Kiev.
Kiev is now paying the bill. The Bucharest decision to deny NATO’s membership action plan to Ukraine appears a message from the West implying that neither Brussels nor the leading European states are going to take the reform rhetoric for real reforms. In this context it doesn’t matter much whether the Kiev political mess was the reason or pretext for the refusal.
Kiev can pay even a higher price. Today the question is addressed whether Ukraine will quickly join Europe or it will never catch up with its neighbors of Central Europe in terms of democratic institutions and economic development. The more time is lost, the higher the chance that experts will keep on convening in Kiev for conferences called “Ukraine between Russia and the EU.”
At the same time, all leading political parties are unanimous in the denial of the possibility of this “in-between” status. No politician in Kiev doubts the necessity for Ukraine to get admission to the European Union, which gives the country an opportunity to change for the better.
Arkady Moshes, Head of Russia and EU Programme, Finnish Institute of International Affairs
All the Article in Russian as of Apr. 22, 2008
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