Yulia Tymoshenko, for the second time now, was taking the Prime Minister’s office without even the faintest illusion regarding the possibility of constructive work with President Yushchenko. She did have an illusion, but this time around, it was about something else: “I will tolerate everything till the crack of doom, and, whatever statements he may make, nothing will put me out of temper”. The Premier more than once declared, both in public and in private conversations, her readiness to put up with Bankova’s obtrusive patronage and criticism. Addressing a parliament session as early as a week ago, Yulia Volodymyrivna surprisingly said, “I highly regard our president”. But at the most recent majority coalition assembly (the second one since its foundation), the BYuT party bloc leader told the parliamentary majority that the unity of the coalition, as was already the case in 2005 , is undermined by the competition ahead of the forthcoming presidential ballot. But at that time, the trial was the 2006 election. Today it’s the 2010 election. “I have sworn two dozen times not to go into the election, but wasn’t believed two hundred times”. In so saying Mrs. Tymoshenko noted that she believes President Yushchenko’s popularity rating to have reached the point of no return one and a half months ago, and the only way out of the situation would be though the adoption by the Parliament of a new constitution transforming Ukraine into a parliamentary republic. She suggested that provisional articles of the new constitution include the one to prolong the current president’s mandate and thereby withdraw the 2010 presidential election from the agenda. “Otherwise”, Tymoshenko warned, “my patience will be exhausted in a couple of months at the latest”.

But hardly a week has passed without BYuT launching anti-presidential statements that are very similar to what could be heard on the European Square during the “Rise, Ukraine!’ protest campaign. A sequel version of the statement was read out by the BYuT faction leader, Ivan Kyrylenko. The full text of the statement, which contains little emotion but largely reflects reality, could only be found on three websites: that of the BYuT party bloc itself, Obkom and Glavred. It was read by hardly any deputies, not excepting those of the Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense faction (known by its Ukrainian-language acronym as NU-NS). Those who did bother and could find the document have yet to recover their senses . There is an impression that the document “Ten steps leading to the abyss” (this was the headline given to it by BYuT’s coalition partners) will inevitably set off an angry reaction from president Yushchenko and immediately trigger a breakup of the formal parliamentary majority. Who would doubt that Yushchenko has read the document? He certainly did, but remained silent. Furthermore, the president, while speaking at a meeting during his most recent visit to Donetsk Region, promised to do what he can to keep the coalition in place. Why?

The ‘Roadmap’ that never worked

This weekend it became apparent that the president was deprived of a ‘big game’ (whose details Mirror Weekly has already given to its readers). According to previous plans, a controlling stake in the Ukrainian government was to be won in a ‘two-phase operation’. During the initial phase, a package of 12 urgent bills proposed by the president was to have been approved in parliament. The bills on the Cabinet of Ministers (a revised version), natural monopolies, the National Guards, State administrations and local self-government, if adopted, were to redistribute powers in the president’s favor, by a score which even national ice hockey teams of Canada or Sweden would envy. The enlarged powers would be enough for the president, if not to remain in office for long, then at least to take decisions he believes to be ‘appropriate’. Enlarged authority is a step closer to absolute authority, which was to be accomplished by means of adopting a revised version of the constitution and a bill during nation-wide referendums. The draft constitution developed by Shapoval to suit this scenario terrified anyone familiar with concepts such as ‘an appropriate balance of power between branches of government”.

To facilitate and legitimize the procedure calling for the new constitution to be approved at a national referendum rather than in parliament chamber, as the current constitution demands, the presidential office took a few steps. For one thing, Deputy Yuri Kliuchkovsky of the Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense faction proposed a bill changing the law on referendums and giving the president an appropriate authority. Second, a public organization known as “Foundation in support of civil society”, organized and financially supported by the ‘Unified Center’ party, began building its national network. Third, the president requested the Constitutional Court answer the question as to whether the constitution and other laws could be adopted at nation-wide referendums.

As might have been expected, this scenario would have worked: Tymoshenko, in a coalition agreement, undertook to facilitate adoption of the bills augmenting the presidential authority; the bills have been laid before parliament already; a party of governors has been set up; the Constitutional Court has promised to heed the wishes of the presidential office employees; and an appropriate ‘roadmap’ has been drawn up. What remains to be done is to travel the path as charted in the roadmap.

Here the trouble began. Kliuchkovsky’s bill on referendums was the first to be voted down. The bills proposed by the president (regarding the National Guards and natural monopolies) were unanimously rejected by the parliamentary committee on national security and homeland defense first, than voted down by other lawmakers. The latter bill would give president control over not only the Border Guards and special communication squads, but also the National Communications Regulatory Authority and the State Financial Services Commission. Adding to everything else, deputies from the above mentioned parliamentary committee managed to convince the president to end political maneuvering over the projected removal of the presidential regiment from control of the Armed Forces Command and placing it under direct control of the Head of the Department of State Security, Gen. Halatei. Therefore, the security-related issues and some of the economic elements of the plan were removed from the agenda.

It goes without saying that, considering the current state of relations between the parliamentary majority, the Prime Minister and the President, the remaining bills from the presidential package have little if any chances of being adopted in a form Yushchenko would wish them to be. This is particularly true for the bill “On the Cabinet of Ministers”, which precludes the possibility of breaches of the Constitution of some kind but, simultaneously, paves the ground for breaches of another kind. Another problem is that the proposed bill will hardly be supported by the BYuT faction in a second-reading vote. For one thing, the Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense faction is not going to approve the ‘imperative mandate’ bill so needed by Tymoshenko. Second… No, it will never happen. Tymoshenko went off like a rocket and lost her cool. She may well regain her cool for some time, but he who expects her to agree to have her power as prime minister trimmed down to a figure head’s (this is precisely what the presidential bill “On the Cabinet of Ministers’ is designed for) is gravely mistaken.

Reciprocally, it is equally obvious that the attempt being made by the president to redouble his control of regional authorities by means of forcing the parliament into approving his version of the bill on ‘State administrations and local self-government’ will inevitably be either rejected altogether or emasculated beyond recognition.

Therefore, it could be said with sound reason that the parliamentary majority is not going to provide for president Yushchenko the drastic redistribution of powers he so much longs for. What remains, or, to be more precise, remained for him was only a constitutional referendum, if it wasn’t for the Constitutional Court decision adopted last Thursday, which provides for so complex procedure for adopting a constitution at a national referendum as to making it hardly workable, if practicable at all. This decision has effectively put to rest not only Yushchenko’s hope of a constitutional blitzkrieg but also to the entire plot devised by the presidential office on Bankova to secure for him a second term in office. The president – left without a strategy for winning the battle or a monopoly of a strategic initiative, and demoted to an ordinary player – has had to take a time-out. This seems to be one apparent reason why he preferred to leave unanswered the challenge thrown out twice by Tymoshenko at the majority coalition assembly and in the BYuT faction’s controversial statement.

About the same thing, again

Now that the president has lost his chance to secure a controlling stake in the government and become an ordinary member of the political ‘closed joint-stock company’ (even if holding a blocking stake), Yushchenko is in need of a partner. Such a partner came to be in the person of the Party of Regions, who delegated one of its most proficient communicators to report to the presidential office on the progress it reached in the constitution-relation talks with Tymoshenko. It goes without saying that for the Party of Regions, the chance of coming back to power today is far more valued than the prospect of winning the same prize as a result of a constitutional referendum and a fresh election, which is yet to be won. The dialogue – which the Party of Regions is maintaining with Yulia Tymoshenko and her associates, discussing consolidation of efforts for the sake of obtaining a new constitution that would turn Ukraine into a parliamentary republic -- is nothing new. It was launched several years go not by Viktor Yanukovych but Rinat Akhmetov, who is known to be uninterested in presidential dominance, no matter who may take the post Number One. What approximated the Party of Regions and the BYuT is the fact that they both are emphatically against the initiative calling for a new constitution to be approved through a national referendum. Simultaneously, that dialogue, which certainly was no secret for the presidential office, was, according to the Party of Region’s plot, to force Yushchenko onto more decisive actions aimed at securing a new majority coalition. Now that the threat of a new constitution being adopted without parliament’s involvement has been effectively eliminated, and Tymoshenko has come public with all the inner grievances she had nursed for four months, the Party of Regions leaders confirmed to the President that they are open and ready for a dialogue. But the problem remains as it was: a majority coalition is formed not by individual deputies but parliamentary factions, and, therefore, the concept of a new coalition must find support among the majority of the Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense faction. As early as yesterday, the Legislative Speaker, Arseniy Yatseniuk said that a new coalition is out of the question, and no coalition other than the existing one is capable of working in the current parliament. Today, this seems far less certain, in that the key word in this context is ‘working’, which is inapplicable to the current legislature as long as it is effectively ‘sitting idle’.

“First must be the approval of the Government action plan, then appointments of personnel to Government positions and the bill on the “imperative mandate”, the BYuT emphatically insists while suggesting its own parliamentary agenda. “No way,” the NU-NS responds, “The first must be the bill “On the Cabinet of Ministers” and budget changes”. “The president interferes with our work. He brings the prime minister and her government into discredit. He whips up inflation with his statements. He prevents us from carrying out personnel appointments for positions of the head of the State Property Fund, a deputy prime minister and the head of the Antimonopoly Authority,” the BYuT continuous. The NU-NS fires back: “You are reluctant to approve the bills specified in the coalition agreement. The president previously insisted that the legislation should have been adopted prior to the prime minister’s nomination, but did so with good grace. You breach the Law “On the National Budget” by failing to propose the budget changes which were to have been laid before parliament as long ago as March 1. And where is the draft law on government procurement which the parliament six weeks ago obliged you to complete and submit for consideration and possible approval in a two weeks’ time?” “With our government in place, the president has forgotten altogether what ‘countersign’ is! The government is rectifying his mistakes that are making the budget swell immensely. Tymoshenko has recalled all the lawsuits the Yanukovych-led government once filed against the president. She turned a blind eye to his personnel appointments which, in defiance of the Constitution, have not been agreed with the Cabinet of Ministers”.

And this duel is ongoing. The same Cabinet, after a four-month conflict-free work, has split into “his’ and ‘her’ fractions, and the proposal by the BYuT faction to set up an ad hoc group for drawing up constitutional changes has put many of the NU-NS deputies on their guard. The number of reasons for frictions among the coalition is ever growing, while productivity of the parliament work is ever decreasing. If the situation goes on like this for another couple of weeks, the required majority supporting a new coalition format will be there in the NU-NS faction, if not today then tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. And those who may enter this majority will be regarded not as traitors but almost as heroes preventing the country from coming into a fresh political crisis. And it will be of interest to nobody who is responsible for the crises – the prime minister, whom the president turned into a figure head, or the president himself.

The weak link in this chain is the NU-NS team, and the president, the premier and Viktor Yanukovych understand this too well. The faction has come to the verge of disintegration, and, in such a case, it will split into pro-Tymoshenko and pro-Yushchenko camps, with a small ‘nonaligned’ faction in between. If the pro-presidential faction is numerous enough (37 deputies), the only thing left will be an ‘audition’ for the premier’s post. Who may it be: Yanukovych, Bohatyreva, Baloha, Yatseniuk or Khoroshkovsky?

The question is: who will be first to deliver a strike and declare the current coalition to be no longer existing – the NU-NS or the BYuT? Yushchenko and Tymoshenko have taken their marks. The race will be lost by the one who loses their temper and breaks away, and thereby betray his/her election pledges and the voter expectations that have grown starting in the Orange Revolution days and have remained alive ever since.

As for the president, he can wait a while. He, like the Party of Regions who say they don’t long for Tymoshenko’s dismissal, understands too well that the longer Yulia Volodymyrivna remains in premier’s office under the existing economic circumstances, the higher will be the inflation rate and the lighter the people’s purses, hence the lower her popularity rating. Protracted occupation of the premiership – under conditions of insufficient proficiency of the government team, counterwork by the presidential office, de facto disabled legislature, global economic tendencies and the presence of the problems which cannot be resolved immediately – can hit a deadly blow on the future of Yulia Tymoshenko as a politician. Incidentally, the first such blow might be the forthcoming mayoral election in Kyiv, which the BYuT succeeded to initiate but failed to properly prepare for. Those on Bankova (if, of course, they have enough patience) will count their chickens after they are hatched. Then the advent of a new coalition may follow. There can be no doubt that this new alliance will come and tell the people via their self-controlled television channels who is to be blamed for the eternally rising inflation and the Ukrainian government’s nonfeasance during the past year. But they should remember that the natural gas price, which is expected to hit 400 USD per 1000 cubic meters in 2009 already, will inevitably kill the Party of Regions’ and the NU-NS’s popularity ratings, just as the high inflation rate is killing Tymoshenko’s. True enough, the Regions are tying to convince Yushchenko of their ability to resolve all the gas-related issues. He, who knows who and how may resolve these issues, may say with a great degree of certainty that there will lo longer be a state such as Ukraine, at least an independent Ukraine, and there can be no mistake about it.

Infraction prevention

A contention that Ukraine is currently living through the most critical period in its history might be a generalization. We all remember too well the early 1990s, when the annual inflation rate in the newly-born state soared to dozens of thousands of percent; the president of Crimea Meshkov did not allow a Ukrainian Army’s tank corps into the peninsula; the main intelligence directorate of the Russian General Staff (GRU) made itself at home in Sevastopol; tactical nuclear weapons arsenals were being removed to Russia without control by the president of Ukraine; and nominal borders were no obstacle to trespassers or smugglers.

The challenges facing our country today might be less abundant, but nevertheless they are equally threatening.

For one thing, at that time Ukraine saw a system of power being built up intensively, but today it sees it being demolished with equal intensity. The point is not only in the unreasoned constitutional changes introduced as a result of political bargaining in 2004. What I am talking about began in 2005, when the elite evolutionary process was deliberately brought to a stop. They decided then that government offices can be held by any Tom, Dick or Harry. It was good thing they hadn’t extended this decision to doctors or airmen. The tradition of stripping off the fertile ‘bureaucrats’ layer’ has been followed by all post-Orange-Revolution governments, not excepting the ‘blue-and-white’ one. As a result, authorities began to be formed by ‘classified tickets’ not only at the level of the national and regional legislatures. This principle is now de facto applicable to all branches of government. Furthermore, the selection criteria don’t include professionalism, honesty or intelligence but, instead, the candidates’ loyalty and financial soundness, and rare exceptions only prove the rule. As a result, the authorities have become less proficient, less intellectual and far less honest, in the latter case not because their predecessors were more honest, but because there is nobody left to be feared, at all.

Second, the high-level fighting for an election victory makes the top players forget altogether what constitutes their number-one challenge at the current stage of the country’s development, specifically the introduction of systemic reforms. Each of the three top Ukrainian political players more or less realize the need of the reforms, but all explain their slackness by the following logic: “Now preparations for the decisive battle are going on. What is of critical importance now is to garner as much resources and voter support as possible. It is imperative that sufficient financial, media and electoral reserves be built up. I will begin attending to the country’s salvation and development once I take the country’s top office for a long enough period”. The result is that Tymoshenko and Yushchenko are competing in populism, while Yanukovych, in the absence of State resource, is busy with NATO and language-related issues. This provides an explanation as to why we keep making the same mistake, which is because we make no headway. A country cannot move ahead unless and until the main state and public challenges are correctly identified and begun to be dealt with. Purely personal and corporate interests of policy makers cannot provide enough progress to drive us away from the same old mistake. Stalled reforms and discontinuing confrontation between the country’s top office holders preclude any adequate response to challenges such as ever growing inflation, and, of course, a sizeable enough increase in prices of energy resources, for which the country is ill-prepared and, still worse, is doing almost nothing to prepare. Quite apparently, it is only consolidated effort by all leading political forces that can help Ukraine, over the time still left, to make at least some preparations to adjust itself to the expected ‘price shock’ and convert it from a ‘sentence’ and into a stimulus for energy-saving technology development and overall technical re-equipment. It is only a consolidated, highly responsible and professional policy that can help the national economy to live through, with the least losses, the recession that faces not only Ukrainian but global economy, too. It is only by eliminating their divisions and generating a compromised unified position that the political forces can prevent our eastern neighbor from translating its threatening rhetoric into an anti-Ukrainian campaign. The divided, outdated Ukrainian system of power spares any doubt as to where a ‘flaming match’ needs to be thrown, after which the country could be conquered or, to be more precise, ‘dismembered’ without the turn of a hand.

I am not going to urge Yushchenko, Tymoshenko and Yanukovych to unite. Not because I believe the tri-party coalition to be impracticable, and, at the same time, absolutely indispensable for the country’s salvation, but because I doubt that this alliance will be viable, professional or honest.

To date it has become quite obvious that the existing majority coalition has turned into an impediment to the legislature’s work. Its leaders’ inability to come to terms on the parliamentary agenda has turned the legislature into sort of a “circus show”. Why don’t the president and the prime minister each take a symmetrical step backward and remove the ‘legislative thrombus’ that threatens to cause a “democratic coalition’s infraction’? Why not put aside, at least temporarily, draft legislations relating to ‘the imperative mandate’, local administrations, the Cabinet of Ministers, the government’s agenda, the city of Kharkiv and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) veterans – in sum, the bills that involve more politics than anything else? Instead, let them propose and then try to seriously discuss and adopt draft laws concerning budgetary changes (without which any anti-inflation measures will make no sense) and government procurement (to prevent the washing out of budgetary funds); a new labor code; draft legislation related to the monthly living minimum and minimum hour-rate wage amount; WTO-related legislation, and bills on energy saving or medical insurance. This will hardly provide a way out of the crisis of ambitions, but may help resolve the crisis stemming from the lack of a reason for the Ukrainian authorities’ existence.