Ukraine: The Road from Democracy

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Perhaps the biggest shock for Yushchenko’s supporters is that the president, whom the cultural intelligentsia had claimed as its own, has taken to using coarse and abusive language as the elections approach. Referring to the country’s recent practice of taking out international loans, he said Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko gets loans “like a bitch gets fleas.” He has called parliament “a hall of murderers and pedophiles” and supporters of other candidates “yokels.” He has even used such language in front of shocked foreign dignitaries.

 Yushchenko has not refused to use the power of his office – administrative resources – for his own political ends, despite having been at the receiving end of such tactics in 2004. Since the campaign started, he has made more than 40 flights at taxpayers’ expense for regional rallies. His political events are beamed over the UT-1 state television channel. In early January the Central Electoral Commission ordered the president to stop using administrative resources for his campaign.

“Yushchenko became a victim of the syndrome that has ruined many politicians throughout world history: the power and enormous trust people placed in him have spoiled him,” said Anatoly Lutsenko, a political expert who advised Yushchenko in 2004. “The Latin saying ‘Honores mutant mores, sed raro in meliores’ [Achievements change morals, rarely for the better] is true in Ukraine.”

Experts say there was no turning point in Yushchenko’s career that killed his democratic aspirations. Instead, the transformation occurred gradually. “A lot of people are shocked with the use of abusive language by the president. But I remember occasional instances of it even in 2005. Nobody paid much attention to it at the time,” said Igor Zhdanov, president of the Open Policy think tank in Kyiv.

Even with a long list of transgressions pinned to his name, observers acknowledge that Yushchenko’s tenure helped to push Ukraine toward democracy. “Everything is relative. If you compare less-than-ideal President Viktor Yushchenko with former President Leonid Kuchma, who committed awful infringements of basic freedoms, we see that Ukraine has changed a lot. And the ‘spark of the Maidan,’ [the revolutionary spirit of the protesters on Independence Square] that was with Yushchenko initially has not allowed him to roll things back to the authoritarian level that Ukrainians remember from the time of Kuchma,” Zhdanov said.

With the powers of the presidency trimmed in a deal that eased his path to the office, Yushchenko does not have the authority to commit the kinds of violations that led to the Orange Revolution in 2004. Still, he has a propensity to authoritarianism. He regularly signs decrees reversing government decisions, and the Constitutional Court repeatedly overturns those decrees.

IT’S PERSONAL

 Some Ukrainian politicians say Yushchenko persists in such behavior for one reason – to harm Tymoshenko, the prime minister, presidential candidate, and Yushchenko’s one-time ally.

“Yushchenko’s over-arching problem is envy of Tymoshenko,” said Oleg Rybachuk, director of the presidential secretariat in 2005 and 2006.

“Yushchenko can’t admit to himself that he made mistakes. He really believes that everything good in Ukraine over the last five years is his achievement, and everything bad is connected with Tymoshenko. Therefore Yushchenko sincerely considers battling Tymoshenko to be a mission,” Zhdanov said.

The president’s conflict with Tymoshenko began in 2005 and has become more intractable each year. Over the last five years Yushchenko has also scrapped with almost every other member of his former team, especially those he saw as potential rivals.

But even the many cronies who had no ambitions to replace him, and few qualifications, have forsaken the president. “Yushchenko’s childhood friends and home-folk were the most influential lobbyists on personnel matters,” Rybachuk said.

Viktor Baloga, director of the presidential secretariat from 2006 to 2008, said, “Viktor Yushchenko is unable to choose team members. I repeatedly argued with him that some nominations were impossible, even citing instances of corruption on the part of his closest friends. But he didn’t want to hear it.”

It is worth noting that Yushchenko’s transformation from the model democrat to a politician willing to abuse his power is not unique for Ukraine. Most Orange politicians, including Tymoshenko, have strayed far from democratic standards. A dozen times during the campaign Tymoshenko has said she favors an authoritarian model of governance and wants to concentrate all the power in the country in one place. Her approach to democracy may be even more questionable than Yushchenko’s, as she has long surrounded herself with people suspected of corruption, including some who worked for Kuchma.

Nevertheless, Tymoshenko has maintained the trust of the electorate, trailing only Yanukovych throughout most of the campaign. A 13 January poll suggested she was locked in a tie for second place with a third candidate, businessman Sergey Tigipko.

Today the politicians who were considered the hope of Ukrainian democracy in 2004 are criticized throughout the country. Even Yanukovych, who back then was considered the embodiment of falsification and dishonest elections, has earned the moral right to reproach them. “We shouldn’t confuse democracy and dictatorship,” he said recently. “Democracy means the rule of law, means that human rights are protected. What we saw during the past five years was not democracy. It was the chaos and disorder into which the ‘Oranges’ have cast the country.”

If the polls are right, many Ukrainians will believe him instead of the discredited leaders of the Orange Revolution in Sunday’s elections.

Provided by Transitions Online—Intelligent Eastern Europe

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