It's happened: President Yushchenko has actually dissolved the latest Rada. Any examination of the whys and wherefores should be minimal. There is always so much minute detail that it's impossible to enumerate. Everything is very simple: if the President has dissolved the second parliament in two years, then it's nothing to do with the Rada, but with the President. His feelings of dissatisfaction.
The general view is that Yushchenko wants to be President again. The problem is that he has completely used up his popularity, so one is forced to wonder how he can become President again? There is no answer to this, but if we try and work it out, we come to an understanding of Yushchenko's feelings as he dissolved the second Rada. It's all quite simple: if the routine processes are taking you the wrong way, you have to do something about them.
He had to dissolve the Rada so as to get rid of the government. Tymoshenko's premiership would certainly have helped her in the presidential elections. She would, for example, put all her economic problems down to the world crisis, as well as accusing the President of inactivity, which would actually not be wrong. Another reason for the dissolution was to prevent the Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc (YTB) and Party of the Regions (PR) coalition from becoming stronger. They had already voted in laws which the President didn't like on 2 September and it became clear that they would also change the constitution to make Ukraine a parliamentary republic with the president being elected by the parliament to represent the country in UNESCO. The "Our Ukraine" deputies do not carry enough weight to do anything other than rubber stamp this.
The 2 September vote was Yushchenko's grounds for dissolution. YTB is accused of betraying national interests (and favouring the interests of another country). "Our Ukraine" has left the coalition and there is no majority. Time to dissolve. Yes, there was an idea of a YTB/PR coalition, but the question then is - who would be Prime Minister? Tymoshenko can't hold on to the post, because PR is the stronger bloc and if Yanukovych were to agree not to be Prime Minister, he would simply be humiliating himself. So in these circumstances Tymoshenko doesn't want a coalition,
The history has been set out here simply to enable us to understand the situation in the run up to the elections, as well as the composition of, and relationships within, the next Rada. YTB will discover that it's in a position of weakness: yes, there is still the premiership, still the Cabinet of Ministers, but virtually no chance of maintaining the situation after the election. This, however, can also be seen two ways: the Rada could work very well without a fixed coalition, but no - the official decision was no coalition, no prime minister. Tymoshenko now sees the lie of the land and is trying to get back to the status quo, but she wouldn't have enough people and any majority voting would only be fortuitous. That's why "Our Ukraine" and YTB are trying to tie up with the Lytvyn bloc - and that seems to be working out.
But there is schoolboy honour. Volodymyr Lytvyn can't just simply join the coalition - he has to have some sort of reward for bringing in his people. Some posts. for example. The first thing that springs to mind is the post of speaker, but he won't get that because Yushchenko has said that only Yatsenyuk, the current speaker, will do and the "Our Ukraine" representatives say that the post of speaker falls within their quota. What they don't seem to notice is that this may have been the case in the previous coalition, but now it's a new situation. Lytvyn, of course, pushes off crossly and everyone gets the message - Yushchenko doesn't want a coalition, he wants an election. Why? See above.
At this point Tymoshenko conceives a completely irrational desire to return to the previous coalition. She even consents to the annulment of all the laws passed with PR on 2 September which is what happens. There is another vote and YTB and PR are once more united. But no, the President is not convinced. He says the laws have been repealed today, but in 10 days they'll be passed again. So dissolution has moved even closer.
The polls are not really significant at the moment. Tymoshenko has lost a few points, apparently, but we must not forget what has gone before In May YTB made a very bad showing in the Kiev mayoral election (Kiev: sick to death of politics, open DemocracyRussia, 29 - 05 - 2008 ) which they themselves had initiated. Then Tymoshenko suddenly started behaving reasonably: she preferred to keep quiet and not answer any accusations (which came chiefly from the President and his office). After a couple of months of this Zen silence the Prime Minister had considerably strengthened her position, but then at one blow it all collapsed again. Feelings, emotions and nerves once more to the fore.
As a result YTB is completely isolated in the run-up to the election. Union with "Our Ukraine" is out of the question, and the PR option has also been thrown out. How can she become prime minister? Only by another grouping which has already been vaguely announced, but it would be against one person, Yushchenko. Or the old version - a link with PR, if they get fewer votes than YTB. But this would be public disgrace for PR and would present the President with the opportunity to disband this coalition as unnatural (a perfectly usual argument, by the way). At the same time rumours are continuing to circulate that Rinat Akhmetov has made an agreement with Yushchenko, which would completely exclude YTB.
This immediately gives rise to the question - why should Akhmetov (one of the most important units in PR) want anything to do with Yushchenko. who is out of form, to put it mildly, and whose "Our Ukraine" barely gets past the starting post (3% in Ukraine) in the polls? Because he is the calmest person in Ukraine, or at any event on the left bank. This is understandable if we look at the fate of Mircea Lucescu, the coach for the Donetsk football team "Shakhtar", who is still in post in spite of everything. So Akhmetov is unruffled and could build a coalition with the President, if he doesn't have enough votes. But the President is not necessarily Victor Yushchenko: a president does, after all, have some control over what happens. For example, the Rada...
But Tymoshenko has no one to build a coalition with and there is no political force on the horizon that would consider joining forces with her. To start with, her previous allies are no longer around. They are so centralised. "Our Ukraine" can form a bloc with other parties, then disband and will still be a force. Secondly, she doesn't have much of a choice. Yes, new blocs and parties are a possibility, but the campaign only lasts 2 months, so they won't have much of a chance to get going. Snap elections are not for them. OK, Chernovetsky could get something in Kiev, but he won't be able to extend his patronage to cover the whole country. Anatoliy Hrytsenko and Arseniy Yatsenyuk will hardly have time to unite forces, so for YTB the election is any event going to end in defeat, with the premiership and the Cabinet of Ministers lost. If they managed to get 51%, then of course.......
But let's consider where we started. How can the election help President Yushchenko overcome his problems with a second term? OK, so he runs the show, but so far we've only seen the destruction, what about creation? When "Our Ukraine" barely passes the starting post in the polls? Perhaps Yushchenko has illusions: he still feels he's a man with a mission, so he doesn't believe the polls. For this reason he intends to declare the overall gathering of the parties under his control; he will become the formal head, rather than honorary chairman, and lead his party into the election. It's not very clear whether the constitution allows party presidents, but that's a trifle in comparison with everything else.
Where, for example, in the new united party project would one put Mr Ihor Kril's "United Centre", which split off from "Our Ukraine" as a pro-presidential group with the head of the Presidential Office, Victor Baloga. Something doesn't add up here. If Yushchenko heads up the new project the parliamentary election will become a presidential election for him. He would be setting up his own qualifying round: Yushchenko against Timoshenko (that Yanykovych would come second is not open to doubt). Characteristically, if Tymoshenko loses now, which is unlikely, it won't have much of an effect on her presidential chances. But if Yushchenko loses, the presidential path will be virtually closed to him - he has brought this whole sad business on himself.
How can his "Our Ukraine" (or some kind of "Yushchenko for Ukraine") justify another dissolution? The election date is 7 December. At that time people are not particularly interested in elections and if the turnout is low the administration feels better, because it will be involved in the politics. Incidentally, the counting of votes goes on for two weeks after the election, so one can just imagine how it will be.
Yushchenko will be lobbying people in order to build up his forces. The most popular version is that the second person in the list will be the Speaker, Arseniy Yatsenyuk. He was doing quite well. The surveys show that his party would have got past the starting post - and as he doesn't yet have a party, the votes were for the party-to-be. But instead, the Speaker has the doubtful pleasure of being second in the presidential list. He has just been to Evian as an independent politician: "The presenter, Financial Times Foreign Affairs editor Quentin Peel immediately interrupted the Ukrainian Speaker "I am going to ask you a straight question - whose side are you yourself actually on?" i.e. Yushchenko or Tymoshenko?" Yatsenyuk said he was somewhere in the middle. or to be more precise - an independent politician. Aha, you just try and stay independent!
Yatsenuk only got so much attention because in Ukraine people have for a long time been trying to think how to refresh political life. New people are needed and new parties. But with these extra and snap elections they don't have a chance to spread their wings and, as we see, relatively hopeful people end up as aides to political figures that are past their sell-by date.
Perhaps Yatsenyuk will pull it off, especially if Akhmetov is working on it. He seems to have nothing against new blood, rather the opposite.
