Business Week
As Ukraine votes Jan. 17, disappointment with the Orange Revolution and Viktor Yushchenko is deep—and likely to result in a new government
In the autumn of 2004, on the threshold of the presidential election in Ukraine, an aide to then-President Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Medvedchuk, declared in an interview that he had no doubt of a victory for Viktor Yanukovych, the candidate supported by the country’s power base. Reminded that polls predicted victory for the oppositionist democrat Viktor Yushchenko, the functionary answered curtly, “Yushchenko will not be the president.”
Such certainty gave rise to criticism from representatives of the democratic camp, who accused Medvedchuk of preparing a program of electoral fraud on behalf of Yanukovych.
What happened next is well-known. The November 2004 elections were marred by unprecedented fraud, and Yanukovych was declared the winner, sparking huge protests that came to be known as the Orange Revolution. A repeat of the election resulted in a victory for Yushchenko. For many people in Ukraine and around the world Yushchenko was a model democratic leader, capable of leading to power the country’s democratic forces.
Today, though, it is obvious that those hopes were premature. The romance of the Orange Revolution cooled with each month; the Ukrainian democrats could not work together; promised structural reforms remained nothing more than a nice idea. But probably the greatest disappointment for the people who stood in those vigils on Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti, Independence Square, is Yushchenko himself. The model democrat has become an unpopular autocrat. Increasingly, observers say that Yushchenko grew to be like his predecessor, the anti-democratic Kuchma.
HIS UGLY SIDE
Five years ago the Ukrainian opposition proved what sociologists had been seeing in polls: that people wanted change. In 2004 Kuchma had record low trustworthiness ratings: 7 percent of those polled trusted him, while 59 percent did not. Today Yushchenko has set a new record. Nine percent say they trust him, compared with 84 percent who do not. Still, Yushchenko insists on being on the ballot this weekend. He vows that he will win, saying the polls are not to be trusted.
Suggestions that his time in power has come to an end are met with furious attacks, even during public events. On a live, pre-election talk show, respected journalist Valery Kalnysh asked the president if he had considered getting out of the race and devoting his energies to ensuring that elections are fair. Instead of answering, Yushchenko insulted his interlocutor, declaring him an “unprofessional journalist” who “has no right to work in the media if he asks the president such questions.”
Kalnysh later said, “I was shocked by such a nervous reaction. The president should be ready to answer any questions. If he was confident, he could explain why he intends to continue campaigning.”
In 2004 the “orange opposition” criticized the imperious Yanukovych for lying and manipulating data during the campaign. Today the opposition levels the same charges at the current president. For example, Yushchenko has said that four candidates have promised to step aside in his favor. The politicians in question deny it. “The president has told a lie, once again. We have not had and will not have negotiations with him and his staff,” said candidate Anatoly Gritsenko, minister of defense from 2005 to 2008. Another candidate, Oleg Tyagnybok, leader of the ultra-right Svoboda (Freedom) Party, said, “Yushchenko’s statements are inaccurate. He knows perfectly well that I haven’t met with him since 2005. And neither I nor my colleagues are conducting any negotiations with Yushchenko’s campaign.”
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.
