Відповіді

• 2010.08.25 | Сергій Вакуленко

  Каратницький

  Orange Peels: Ukraine after Revolution
  by Adrian Karatnycky
  New Atlanticist Policy and Analysis Blog, 18 August 2010
  
  Adrian Karatnycky is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council and Managing Partner of Myrmidon Group LLC, a New York based consultancy. This essay appears in the Nov-Dec 2010 issue of The American Interest.
  
  Five years ago, post-Soviet Ukraine, a critically placed country of some 46 million people, seemed to be on the fast track toward modernity. The Orange Revolution, the spontaneous mass protests of fraud in Ukraine’s November 2004 presidential election, presaged a mature civil society and free media. The protests led to the election of Viktor Yushchenko, a banker and former Prime Minister who had joined the opposition and challenged Viktor Yanukovych, handpicked successor of the authoritarian Leonid Kuchma.
  
  But the Orange Revolution’s rhetoric of democracy, reform and NATO integration never lived up to reality. Internecine conflicts and the vanity and venality of the two main leaders of the Orange forces, Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, plagued a series of governments and led rapidly to political deadlock, dysfunctional populist eruptions, and the squandering of a rare mandate for fundamental reform. Indeed, internal Orange camp rivalries led to the collapse of two governments and one incipient majority. When the second Orange government of Prime Minister Tymoshenko took power in December 2007, her policies faced vetoes and nearly endless obstacles strewn before her by President Yushchenko.
  
  The lack of serious long-term dialogue with the opposition, represented by the Party of Regions, added to Ukraine’s domestic political fragmentation, as it reflected the political elite’s indifference about forming a consensus on such contentious issues as national identity, the complex relationship with Russia, and Ukraine’s historical legacy. Worse still, by the end of the Yushchenko presidency in 2010 it had become clear that Ukraine’s Orange leaders, despite their high-minded paeans to Western values, were little different from their adversaries and eagerly made common cause with the country’s oligarchs, the richest ten of whom control about a quarter of the country’s GDP. They also tolerated corruption within their own inner circle to a degree that ultimately made them no better than the elite they had replaced in late 2004.
  
  As a result of all these factors, key agenda items like European integration, NATO membership, judicial reform and efforts to combat massive corruption at middle and lower levels of society all flagged. Before very long, U.S. and European interest in Ukraine plummeted for lack of any means to cooperate on concrete initiatives. Ukrainian politics had thus demobilized the country’s foreign policy.
  
  Political infighting and intrigue on the eve of Ukraine’s presidential elections also had dire economic consequences. The rivalries led to populist policies mixed with raw patronage, as money was squandered on bloated state payrolls and unsustainable pension payments. Ukraine’s GDP in 2009 dropped by 15 percent, one of the worst performances in all of Europe. The country’s budget groaned under the weight of a mounting deficit so high that it forced the IMF to suspend aid.
  
  Yanukovych’s Return
  
  In light of the Orange movement’s endless infighting and rank mismanagement, it was no surprise that the Party of Regions, whose electoral base lay in Russian-speaking southern and eastern Ukraine, stood to benefit in the presidential election held in early 2010. Yet the best that the Party’s standard-bearer Viktor Yanukovych could manage was a narrow 3.5 percent victory over the charismatic Yulia Tymoshenko in the February runoff election. On February 25, with 49 percent of the vote, Yanukovych took office as the first President of Ukraine elected with a mere plurality rather than a majority. Just as important as this is the fact that the election effectively ratified the nearly twenty-year-old divide between the country’s Russophone, Russia-friendly East and the Ukrainophone, EU-friendly West, which remains skeptical of Russia and its enticements.
  
  Despite his narrow margin of victory, Yanukovych and his team moved rapidly to consolidate power and shape a new majority. The pro-business Regions Party succeeded in convincing a pivotal minor party, the Lytvyn Bloc, to join together in an alliance. It also made common cause with the Communists and cajoled a handful of former Tymoshenko and Yushchenko supporters to fashion a durable (and still growing) majority of 258 out of 450 deputies. Incumbent Prime Minister Tymoshenko’s government fell on March 4. A new Regions-led government soon replaced it, headed by geologist-turned-tax administrator Mykola Azarov. A remarkable spirit of consensus and cooperation within the new parliamentary majority, government and presidency marked the first hundred days of this new arrangement.[1]
  
  President Yanukovych had considered a parliamentary coalition with the moderate reformers from Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine bloc. When negotiations dragged on, however, he opted for a coalition primarily dominated by politicians from Ukraine’s Russophone East and South, a choice that is liable to reinforce the country’s neuralgic regional divide. Several ministers have already started mouthing pro-Russia encomia. The controversial education minister Dmytro Tabachnyk, who has made a career out of derogating Ukrainian-language literature and culture, has turned his efforts to protecting the rights of Russian speakers in schools and universities. The new Interior Minister Anatoly Mohyliov has defended Stalin’s 1945 mass deportation of the Tatar population of Crimea and recently suggested that there were no political prisoners in the Soviet Union. His underlings have taken to beating up journalists and opposition protestors while allowing pro-government supporters to gather freely.
  
  Moreover, the narrowly-based government is in its majority an amalgam of old-school politicians, including communists and socialists, who are likely to balk at some of the decisively market-oriented approaches emanating from the presidential team. Prime Minister Azarov, for example, has an old-school (read: Soviet) reputation for disciplined management and little feel for the modern market economy. Thus the news from Ukraine is somewhat mixed.
  
  Ukrainian civil society has not been slow to react to these changes at the top. While the majority of Ukraine’s television networks is free of partisan bias and open to opposition politicians, several have begun tilting toward the Regions Party. Ukraine’s oligarch-owned media, which had room to maneuver when the Prime Minister and President were clashing, apparently now seeks to solidify relations with the more cohesive new government. This, in turn, led to a reaction from television journalists, some of whom have created a Stop Censorship movement, which has rapidly grown in size and energy. The movement’s public protests, while small, have been vigorous and frequent. They seem to have gotten the attention of the new authorities: During a June visit to Kiev I saw one of a dozen or so “flash mobs” that had gathered nationwide to protest pending legislation to regiment, if not restrict, public demonstrations.
  
  But perhaps they protest too much. There are no new censorship laws; one of the reasons is that President Yanukovych himself opposes them. Within days of the first censorship and civic assembly protests, he spoke out clearly against putting political pressure on the media. And the Regions Party itself soon announced that it opposed the then-current draft law on public assemblies and would insist on revisions that reflected the views of civil society groups and human rights monitors. While media monitors do complain that there is less criticism of government on television, opposition leaders have substantial access to the public through highly popular prime-time policy talk shows on most major networks.
  
  Nonetheless, the new government has elicited criticism for its apparent tilt away from the West and toward Russia. In the first weeks of the new administration, it seemed as if a Russian political blitzkrieg were rolling across the Ukrainian steppe. In April, the administration agreed to extend the stay of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol until 2042.[2] This was agreed in apparent return for Russia’s willingness to reduce Ukraine’s gas prices by 30 percent. But these prices were much inflated, the ruinous legacy of a pricing agreement struck by former Prime Minister Tymoshenko, who traded low prices in 2009, her last year in office, for much higher prices in 2010, which were to take effect after the presidential elections. The opposition lambasted the Black Sea Fleet legislation, which had been rapidly rushed through the parliament in violation of its procedures, as a surrender of national sovereignty.
  
  After these events, Russia followed up with a multi-front offensive, the aim of which was to slice away chunks of Ukraine’s sovereignty: to place Ukraine’s gas and oil monopoly under majority Russian control; to merge the two countries’ aircraft industries; to purchase major Ukrainian banks; and to place Ukraine’s gas and oil pipelines under Russian co-management. For the time being, Ukraine is wary of such wholesale interdependence. It will likely reject Russia’s far-reaching gas and oil proposals, but its new President may find common ground on joint airplane production, and the parliament is likely to agree to partner with Russia in the construction of two new Ukraine-based nuclear power plants that would export electricity to the European Union.
  
  The new leadership in Kiev understands that Russia will continue to exploit Ukraine’s economic vulnerabilities and its need for foreign investment amid Western equivocation about investing in Ukraine. That precisely is why Ukraine is seriously interested in attracting new capital to balance Russia’s vigorous new economic incursions. A state visit to China and other rising Asian economies this fall, a visit by Hillary Clinton to Kiev over the July 4 holiday, and a July announcement that Ukraine has reached an agreement in principle with the International Monetary Fund on renewing aid are only the most visible signs of Ukraine’s efforts to diversify the bases of its foreign policy.
  
  Just as important as these efforts are President Yanukovych’s continuing assertions that European Union membership is Ukraine’s principal strategic aim. He also has reaffirmed that Ukraine will not join any military, political or economic structures outside those of the European Union, politely rejecting Russia’s calls for deeper integration. At the same time, his team has made clear that, like two-thirds of Ukraine’s citizens, it does not support NATO membership and instead backs a “non-bloc” security policy. This position is certain to reduce tensions with Russia, at least in the mid-term.
  
  Most promising is Yanukovych’s approach to the economy. While the government consists mainly of fifty- and sixty-somethings, the presidential administration is populated with thirty- and forty-somethings who have been educated in the country’s elite institutions. These young lawyers and economists, many of whom speak English fluently, grew up amid Ukrainian independence and are conversant with Western ways. Yanukovych’s Chief of Staff, Serhiy Lovochkin, wrote his doctoral dissertation on U.S. tax policy. Irina Akimova, First Deputy in the Presidential Office, formerly served as head of a UN Development Agency blue ribbon commission on economic reform. One of the few administration voices sensitive to the concerns of Ukraine’s Western electorate, Hanna Herman, the President’s image-maker and spokeswoman, formerly headed Radio Liberty’s Kiev office.
  
  While the more conservative government team is pressing small and mid-sized businesses to help reduce the gaping budget deficit through intensive and intrusive audits, reformers in the government and their backers in the presidential administration are looking instead to reduce regulatory impediments, create tax holidays for new small businesses and improve contract enforcement to spur foreign investment. They want to reduce inefficiencies in energy use through reductions in heavy subsidies to gas consumers and to restructure pensions in part by raising the retirement age, which stands now at 55 for women and sixty for men.
  One important signal of Yanukovych’s commitment to serious economic reform is the presence in the new government of Serhiy Tyhypko, a billionaire banker and Yanukovych’s political rival, who finished a strong third in the first round of the presidential election. As Deputy Prime Minister for the Economy and European Integration, Tyhypko oversees a large portion of the economic agenda and leads negotiations with international financial institutions. He insists Ukraine will soon reach an agreement with the International Monetary Fund resuming and expanding financing to strengthen the currency and recapitalize weak banks. Tyhypko told me in early June that he is convinced that Yanukovych is serious about implementing ambitious economic reforms. And it doesn’t hurt that, for reasons that have little to do with politics, the economy has been growing at a healthy annualized rate of 6.1 percent through May.
  
  The Other News
  
  Despite all these hopeful signs, the new ruling team includes a significant cohort of retrograde voices. Those voices incline toward authoritarianism and roughly align with the strong pro-Russia lobby within the ruling Party of Regions. This does not mean, however, that Ukraine will soon return to Russian domination or that a new authoritarian system will arise. Indeed, one already hears whispers that a government reshuffle this fall will retire some of the more politically polarizing Ministers. There also are signals that Yanukovych may be seeking to expand the base of his coalition by reaching agreement with a large segment of the Our Ukraine parliamentary bloc, including rumors this summer that several key government posts may be given to “Orange” politicians.
  
  One hears, too, that government will likely jettison some divisive proposals to weaken the place of the Ukrainian language in the educational system in the run-up to local government elections.
  
  Indeed, just as the pro-Western euphoria that accompanied President Yushchenko’s election was exaggerated, so is the alleged pro-Russian tilt of the new leadership. Anxieties about a Russia-influenced reassertion of authoritarianism are not likely to be borne out. As the country’s second post-Soviet President, Leonid Kuchma, famously asserted in the title of one of his books, “Ukraine is not Russia.” Ukraine has a strong linguistic and cultural identity. Its security and military services do not dominate the state and are not actively engaged in the political process, so a counter-majoritarian coup is extremely unlikely. Its Orthodox Church is fragmented into several groupings, there is a strong Eastern-rite Catholic Church, and Evangelical Christianity is growing in strength. Journalists are militantly protective of their rights, and civil society is relatively well developed. Charismatic and well-known leaders helm strong opposition forces. Above all, Ukraine’s economy is not resource-based, and the state, therefore, has fewer economic assets to deploy in a bid to influence society and build support.
  Furthermore, President Yanukovych’s authority depends on the cooperation of his political allies rather than, as in Russia, on the broad constitutional powers of a strong presidency. Despite relative cohesion and cooperation, which have given Yanukovych approval ratings well above 60 percent, there are already signs of emerging rivalries among different factions within the Yanukovych team. Over time that might make it harder for the President to get his preferred policies enacted, but it ensures that Yanukovych cannot hijack the Ukrainian state as Vladimir Putin hijacked the Russian one.
  
  Not all analysts of Ukrainian affairs share these relatively optimistic views. Indeed, despite little direct evidence, many human rights groups now contend that the new government has launched a full-scale assault on press freedoms and civil liberties. Domestic foreign policy analysts and some Western scholars alike suggest that Ukraine is well on the road to surrendering its sovereignty and becoming a vassal of Russia. Rutgers University professor Alexander Motyl has argued in the pages of Foreign Affairs that Yanukovych is both an enemy of democracy and anti-Ukrainian. On the pages of the Kyiv Post he has written that “Yanukovych has shown that he is an authoritarian, radical, and disunifier—everything that the Orange revolutionaries had accused him of being in 2004.”
  
  What accounts for such overheated analysis? It stems from three sources: the myths and realities of the Orange Revolution, Leonid Kuchma’s authoritarian rule, and the myths surrounding the emergence of vast fortunes in Ukraine in the late 1990s. And aside from these three sources, there is also the Grand Guignol mudslinging style of Ukrainian politics.
  
  Voter fraud and electoral irregularities in the 2004 presidential election, authoritarian policies largely implemented by the former President Kuchma and the notorious poisoning of then-opposition standard-bearer Viktor Yushchenko combined to give rise to the view that the forces around Yanukovych had little regard for democratic practice. Retrospective analysis of that period, however, makes it clear that at least three protagonists were engaged in political battle in that crucial year: Yushchenko’s proponents; Yanukovych’s advocates; and, less often mentioned but not less important, those who sought to prolong the power and perhaps the presidency of two-term President Kuchma. The failure of Yushchenko and the Orange Revolution to offer a clear and definitive legal answer to the events that sparked the initial protests—including the uncovering and punishment of those who attempted to kill or incapacitate him through dioxin poisoning—also contributed much to the chaos of the moment and to the ambiguities about who was responsible for what.
  
  The narrative of the Orange Revolution, too, exaggerated the image of the Orange forces as agents of the West and of the Party of Regions as a tool of Russia. In point of fact, both were indigenous forces that sought support wherever they could get it. Indeed, a decade ago the Regions Party’s business elite already understood that Ukraine’s future rested in European integration. And in 2000, its leaders sought to make common cause with Viktor Yushchenko, not Viktor Yanukovych, but were blocked from doing so by then-President Kuchma.
  
  My own conviction that President Yanukovych and his inner circle today are on balance normal political leaders seeking to build a European state did not come easily or quickly. Having headed a U.S.-based democracy organization that worked with human rights and opposition groups from the 1990s to the Orange Revolution, I had armed myself with certain natural biases. But my interactions with Ukraine’s entire political spectrum for the past two decades persuade me that, with the exception of their cultural and linguistic policies, the Yanukovych team is essentially on the right track. Indeed, the President, like many in his inner circle, has undergone a transformation as rapid and remarkable as the fundamental changes that have taken place in Ukraine itself, which has transformed itself in two decades from a Soviet province mired in backward totalitarianism to a still-imperfect but functioning market democracy.
  
  As a Russian-speaking teenaged orphan living in extreme poverty in the Soviet industrial wasteland of Yenakyeve, Yanukovych was twice sentenced to jail on charges of assault. Prison changed him. After his release he worked rigorously at self-improvement, went to college, and became a deeply devout Orthodox Christian. He worked first as a business manager and later as a regional official, Deputy Governor and Governor of Ukraine’s largest province, Donetsk. When he entered the national political scene, already in his early fifties, he worked diligently to learn Ukrainian and today speaks it precisely and fluently. After the Orange Revolution, he remained committed to politics and staged a dramatic democratic political comeback through perseverance and strength of will. In time, he became a public figure comfortable with the give-and-take of pluralistic politics.
  
  A similarly radical transformation occurred in many of Ukraine’s oligarchs, who, during the collapse of communism, amassed their fortunes in an environment in which criminality, murder and violent conflict over wealth and property were the norm. Today, however, they are not only super-rich; they also run exemplary publicly traded companies, rely on the services of Western-educated top managers, have their company finances audited by top Western accounting firms, are engaged in creative charitable work, and are sophisticated citizens of the globalized community with significant holdings in the European Union and North America. Having survived an environment of rampant corruption, they now seek transparency, predictability and contract enforcement to protect their vast fortunes.
  
  As for Ukraine’s tradition of inflated political rhetoric, this is the standard undertone with which all observers must make their peace. To judge by some of the charges the opposition levels today, including statements by Tymoshenko, Ukraine is now a country led by the Yanukovych “mafia regime”, which is surrendering its sovereignty, pillaging its resources and installing a dictatorship. Yet just a year ago, stymied by internecine conflict among the Orange team, Tymoshenko herself sought a grand alliance with this same, supposedly evil Yanukovych. Other opposition leaders, including Serhiy Tyhypko, who serves in the new government, and Arseniy Yatseniuk, the former parliamentary speaker, may voice targeted criticisms at specific failings, but they reject claims of the malevolent intentions of the new team.
  
  These more nuanced and measured views should inform Western governments and analysts, but nuance has an uphill climb to get past old habits and easy-to-understand simplifications about good guys versus bad guys that so often tempt American audiences.
  
  Assaying Ukraine’s future is not just a game for political junkies and ethnic affiliates living in North America. The stability of Europe depends on Russia’s political evolution and consequently on Russia’s behavior toward its neighbors. The failure of democracy in Ukraine would likely strengthen authoritarian tendencies in Russia and embolden the siloviki, Russia’s national security elite. At the same time, tensions between Ukraine and Russia could again disrupt Europe’s strategically important energy flows, while unresolved issues such as border delineation could quickly escalate and take unpredictable turns.
  
  From this perspective, President Yanukovych’s more pragmatic approach to Russia is to be welcomed, provided it is not a harbinger of a full-scale takeover of Ukraine’s key industries by Russian interests. But that is not likely. Yanukovych has made it abundantly clear in both private and public declarations that he does not want Ukraine to be overly reliant on Russia. However, Europe and the United States seem resistant to re-entering Ukraine’s complex market environment. If IMF funding is renewed this autumn, as many expect, the U.S. and European governments should encourage the flow of new investment into the country. They should also put President Yanukovych’s strong public declarations in favor of European integration and democratic values to the test. Any departures from these, and certainly any attempts to backtrack on human rights, should meet with consistent and pubic criticism by U.S. and European leaders.
  
  Ukraine under President Yanukovych remains on a path toward stable democracy and eventual European integration. But the fragility of its political institutions, its vulnerability to pressure from Russia, the deep problems caused by the global economic crisis, the temptations of anti-democratic shortcuts and endemic corruption all pose challenges to Ukraine’s progress. It is therefore essential for the future of a stable Europe and a more cooperative Russia that the West help Ukraine’s new President succeed. Yanukovych is not a spotless “good guy” or a dastardly “bad guy”, but he is the guy who won a free and fair election in a country where there are real checks and balances and a high degree of pluralism. On that basis he deserves the benefit of our doubt.
  
  Notes
  
  1 In 1996, four-and-a-half years into independence, Ukraine adopted a constitution that created a mixed presidential-parliamentary system with the predominant influence on policy in the hands of the President. In 2005, as a consequence of a compromise between opposition and government during the Orange Revolution, presidential powers were eroded and a system of rough parity between parliament and President was put in place. Ukraine’s polity therefore remains a hybrid, with the President enjoying far fewer constitutional powers than in autocratic presidential post-Soviet states like Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, but far more powers than the presidencies of Western and Central Europe.
  
  2 For background see Charles King, “City on the Edge: Is Sevastopol the Next European Flashpoint?” The American Interest (May/June 2009).
  згорнути/розгорнути гілку відповідей

  • 2010.08.25 | ziggy_freud

    Re: Yanukovych’s commitment to serious economic reform?

    - any evidence of such a commitment? Except for author's personal sympathy to Tigipko...
    
    it's rather a step against Tymoshenko - further divide of former Dnipropetrovsk clan.

  • 2010.08.25 | ziggy_freud

    Українська промисловість агонізує? (/)

    25.08.2010 17:19 _ Юрій Глухов, для ЕП
    
    Зростаючий імпорт б'є по промисловості і всій економіці. Якщо уряд не вживе запобіжних заходів, а зовнішня кон'юнктура для металургів залишиться несприятливою, то у 2011 році промислове виробництво в Україні, швидше за все, впаде, а за ним знизиться і ВВП.

• 2010.08.25 | Сергій Вакуленко

  Мотиль

  Ukraine’s Leadership: Why Yanukovych Does Not Deserve the Benefit of the Doubt
  by Alexander Motyl
  New Atlanticist Policy and Analysis Blog, 20 August 2010
  
  Alexander J. Motyl (Ph.D., Columbia University, 1984) is a Contributing Editor at the Atlantic Council, and a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark.
  
  Adrian Karatnycky’s article, “Orange Peels: Ukraine after Revolution,” was written about six months too late. Had it appeared back in February 2010, Karatnycky’s analysis—and his suggestion that Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych “deserves the benefit of our doubt”—would have been right on target.
  
  Indeed, what Karatnycky fails to mention is that Yanukovych was given the benefit of the doubt by most Western and Ukrainian analysts (me included) and a significant portion of the Ukrainian electorate. Recall that some 4.5 percent of voters (most of whom were from the Orange camp that supported former President Viktor Yushchenko) voted against both Yulia Tymoshenko and Yanukovych in the final round of the presidential ballot, effectively giving their vote to the latter and providing him with the margin of victory he needed to win.
  
  The rationale employed by those of us who gave Yanukovych the “benefit of the doubt” was precisely that outlined by Karatnycky. We believed that five years of opposition would have led Yanukovych and his authoritarian Party of Regions to shed their authoritarian inclinations and embrace democracy. We also believed Yanukovych’s promise that he would be a moderate, promote the unity of the country, appoint only professionals, and pursue economic reform. After all, with such a narrow margin of victory, how could he do otherwise?
  
  Boy, were we ever wrong.
  
  The vast majority of democratically inclined analysts and Ukrainians have now turned against Yanukovych—and with a vengeance. Why? Karatnycky suggests that “such overheated analysis … stems from three sources: the myths and realities of the Orange Revolution, Leonid Kuchma’s authoritarian rule, and the myths surrounding the emergence of vast fortunes in Ukraine in the late 1990s. And aside from these three sources, there is also the Grand Guignol mudslinging style of Ukrainian politics.”
  
  Nothing could be further from the truth.
  
  The reality is that Yanukovych has violated every single one of his promises. And those of us who gave him the “benefit of the doubt” feel betrayed.
  
  Yanukovych and his party have proceeded to dismantle democracy—violating the Constitution in order to acquire a parliamentary majority, transforming the Parliament into a rubber-stamp institution, encroaching on freedom of assembly and speech, passing a law on local elections that guarantees a Party of Regions monopoly of power, encroaching on academic autonomy, and activating both the Security Service and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In addition, Yanukovych has launched a full-scale assault on Ukrainian language, culture, and identity—thereby negating his own claims of wanting to promote the unity of the country—and turned Ukraine toward Russia, so much so that he tolerates the revival of Stalinist rhetoric and Russian revanchism in Ukraine, as well as the return to the Crimea of the Russian security service. And all of this—the assault on democracy, the assault on Ukrainian identity, and the turn toward Russia—have been accomplished in just a few months. So much for moderation! Not moderates, but radicals act this quickly, this comprehensively, this fundamentally. Indeed, the comparison with Hitler’s Gleichschaltung in 1933 comes to mind. Recall that he too came to power in a fair and free election…
  
  Worse still, as Karatnycky implies, most of Yanukovych administration consists of Soviet-style managers at best and incompetents at worst. The people in Yanukovych’s supposed inner circle—Serhii Lovochkin, Irina Akimova, Hanna Herman, and Serhii Tihipko (even if the wonder boys and girls that Karatnycky implies they are)—are only four individuals compared to a retrograde cabinet of ministers consisting of just under 30 anti-professionals. Lovochkin and Herman, moreover, are widely considered to be opportunists, while Tihipko is rumored to be on the verge of quitting or getting fired as the fall guy for the government’s economic failures. That leaves, perhaps, Akimova as the sole member possibly having lasting reformist credentials on Yanukovych’s putative team.
  
  Then there’s the question of economic reform. One could argue, I suppose, that dismantling democracy might be the price one has to pay for bold economic change. Alas, the simple fact is that, after almost half a year in office, Yanukovych has delivered absolutely nothing. True, he’s signed a deal with the IMF, but so would have Tymoshenko or Yushchenko. The government’s budget is widely considered to be a sham. The economic plan consists mostly of generalities. Corruption is as rampant as it used to be: indeed, Yanukovych acquired his own estate in a questionable manner.
  
  Most telling is the Tax Code, which absolutely everyone—even members of the Party of Regions—agrees is a disaster. In the meantime, the government has begun extorting taxes from small and medium enterprises. All of this retrograde behavior was perfectly predictable when Yanukovych appointed the notorious Mykola Azarov as prime minister. Azarov, after all, is known for his inability to think in market terms and, back in the days of President Kuchma, squeezed entrepreneurs in the same manner that he is doing today.
  
  Last but not least, there’s Yanukovych himself. Karatnycky believes in his make-over. True, Yanukovych often says the right things. But more often than not, he also says the wrong things—like defining democracy as “order”—and, of course, engaging in more gaffes than even George W. Bush. But his statements, like his new haircut, and his having mastered Ukrainian are neither here nor there. Politicians should be measured by what they do—not what they say.
  
  And Yanukovych’s record is quite clear: he’s done nothing constructive, while accomplishing an enormous number of positively destructive things. If one cares about democracy and the market in an independent Ukraine, that is.
  
  A politician with that kind of record no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt. He deserves our prayers. And so does the country he’s misruling.
  згорнути/розгорнути гілку відповідей

  • 2010.08.25 | ziggy_freud

    Yanukovych...: he’s done nothing constructive

• 2010.08.25 | Сергій Вакуленко

  Каратницький bis

  Yanukovych Earned the Benefit of our Doubt in those Areas
  Where He Has Fallen Short
  by Adrian Karatnycky
  Kyiv Post, 20 August 2010
  
  In his rejoinder to my recent American Interest article, “Orange Peels,” my good friend Alexander Motyl claims he and other critics of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych gave him the benefit of the doubt.
  
  For the record, Motyl’s benefit of the doubt did not last long. Within five weeks of the inauguration Ukraine’s new President, Motyl wrote that Yanukovych: “has committed a series of mistakes that could doom his presidency, scare off foreign investors and thwart the country’s modernization. Yanukovych’s misrule is courting a second Orange Revolution.” So much for a honeymoon for the new president - and his then three-week-old government.
  
  Motyl is correct that voters did give Yanukovych the benefit of the doubt. They continue to do so. He enjoys approval ratings of over 60 percent, an improvement over his 50 percent level of support in the presidential vote. That means that today, well over 20 percent of Yulia Tymoshenko voters are pleased with Yanukovych’s performance.
  
  I don’t think much needs to be said about Motyl’s comment comparing Yanukovych’s moderate policies “with Hitler’s Gleichschaltung in 1933.” It merely confirms my thesis of the excessive rhetoric adopted by normally sober analysts of Ukraine’s politics.
  
  Motyl asserts that “Yanukovych and his party have proceeded to dismantle democracy — violating the Constitution in order to acquire a parliamentary majority, transforming the Parliament into a rubber-stamp institution, encroaching on freedom of assembly and speech, passing a law on local elections that guarantees a Party of Regions monopoly of power, encroaching on academic autonomy, and activating both the Security Service and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.”
  
  I believe we can agree that Ukraine’s constitution and its court system are flawed. However, Yanukovych’s alleged steps against the constitution were no less problematic than the reality that for well over a year the Tymoshenko government held on to power with the support of less than half the legislators in parliament. Moreover, on March 1, 243 legislators voted for the dismissal of the Tymoshenko government, a clear affirmation of the will of that sitting body.
  
  More significantly, after the vote for a new government was taken, President Yanukovych told European Union representatives that "If the decision of the Constitutional Court will be that the coalition was formed illegally, then I will take a decision on a snap election, I will never go down the path of breaching the constitution that is in force.”
  
  Many critics of the decision assert that the Constitutional Court itself is subject to political influence and pressures and, so, lacks legitimacy. But if one argues that Ukraine’s entire legal system is illegitimate, one must also agree that the same “illegitimate” court system took the decision to hold a re-run of the tainted presidential election of 2004 that sparked the Orange Revolution.
  
  The reality is that today no fewer than 260 out of 450 legislators support the current government. While imperfect, this clear majority is a better outcome than a situation in which a de facto minority Tymoshenko government held on for over a year despite the fact that well over half the deputies in the legislature supported its dismissal.
  
  Indeed, is it not more logical that Ukraine has a government which enjoys the support of 260 deputies than one that could have hung on with the support of a mere 115 deputies? Bear in mind, that under the interpretation of Ukraine’s Constitution offered by the opposition, a government could remain in office if it retained the backing of a majority of deputies, whose fractions together account for a majority. That would have meant that a majority (78) of 155 deputies from the Tymoshenko bloc and a majority (37) of 72 deputies from the Our Ukraine bloc could have continued to claim they represent a legitimate majority of 227. Under such circumstances, we can agree that the Constitutional Court’s ruling was at the very least not a dilution of democracy as it existed prior to Yanukovych’s election.
  
  While I agree that a new election would have been preferable, I can also see why given the fact that Ukraine faced a growing economic crisis, President Yanukovych felt he could not delay moving forward without an effective government. A new election would likely have put off the creation of such a government for a further 4-5 months.
  
  On other issues, Prof. Motyl is simply wrong. Academic freedom has not been infringed upon systematically. Under Yanukovych, not a single professor has lost his teaching post in Ukraine’s universities. A widely publicized visit by a low level security service functionary to the rector of Ukraine’s Catholic University contained no discussion of academic matters and was soon followed up by a contrite visit by the head of the Security Service to clear the air.
  
  Demonstrations remain an inalienable right of Ukrainians, though the proposition has not yet been tested as most Ukrainians are for the moment tired of protesting. It is true there has been excesses by the Ministry of Interior in policing demonstrations (mostly keeping demonstrators at a distance from President Yanukovych for “safety” reasons), but these excesses resulted in the Minister of the Interior being called on the carpet by President Yanukovych and sternly rebuked for such actions.
  
  On balance, while not a sterling record, Yanukovych’s half year in office is hardly one of misrule. He has taken a reasonably effective set of steps in a variety of policy areas, while making some serious mistakes in the educational and cultural spheres.
  
  And in the case of press freedom, there is plenty of it. Opposition forces are seen regularly on the major TV stations, and the news and information content of the major channels belonging to billionaires Viktor Pinchuk and Rinat Akhmetov reveal a high degree of balance and professionalism in coverage.
  
  While the most popular channel Inter has a pro-government bent, its tilt is no different from the partisan bent observed on the US’s (conservative) Fox News channel and on (liberal) CNBC.
  
  On the matter of culture, I am in broad agreement with Motyl. We both disagree fundamentally with the Ukrainophobic policies of Education Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk and with the naming of a Stalin apologist as head of the Institute of National Memory, I still believe that these odious appointments can and will be reversed. Nevertheless, I think that Yanukovych is right in trying to ensure a hospitable environment for Ukraine’s Russian-speakers. Such steps, in my view, are likely to deepen their support for Ukraine’s statehood.
  
  However, I do not agree with Motyl that Ukraine is threatened by the presence of a couple dozen Russian security services agents who are attached to the Russian Black Sea Fleet and have been allowed to be present on the peninsula.
  
  And I fundamentally disagree with Motyl’s assertion that Yanukovych is eroding Ukraine’s sovereignty and independence.
  
  Indeed, by stabilizing and normalizing relations with Russia, renewing sensible Russian investment in Ukraine (while at times blocking takeovers that are not in the national interest), securing a cheaper price for natural gas, and renewing and expanding cooperation with the International Monetary Fund, Yanukovych is creating a stronger Ukrainian economy better able to defend its sovereign interests. His planned September visits to Asia and the US (UN General Assembly) are also aimed at diversifying and increasing international investment in Ukraine’s economy.
  
  As for economic reform, the presidential team has developed a serious, sequenced plan of reform that is to be introduced gradually over the next couple years. It will include speeded up privatizations, investment promotion initiatives, and, most likely, land privatization. All that sounds like a serious agenda to me.
  
  And on the matter of corruption, Yanukovych’s government has already moved against high level corruption in the Kyiv mayoralty (which was controlled his political allies), and arrested his Deputy Environment Minister, his regional, and a mid-level Presidential Administration official all for alleged corruption.
  
  On balance, while not a sterling record, Yanukovych’s half year in office is hardly one of misrule. He has taken a reasonably effective set of steps in a variety of policy areas, while making some serious mistakes in the educational and cultural spheres.
  
  On some matters, President Yanukovych has acted intelligently and erased doubts. He therefore has earned the benefit of our doubt in those areas where he has fallen short.
  згорнути/розгорнути гілку відповідей

  • 2010.08.25 | ziggy_freud

    19 years of land "reform" (/) - 19 years more needed?

    протягом цього часу Янукович кілька років був прем*єром, мабуть, найдовше за інших, - за президента Кучми і за президента Ющенка. Та й Азаров наче не відпочивав в СІЗО як в*язень Аранжевого Фошизма, а регулярно пиляв гроші МВФ. Включно з призначеними на земельну реформу.
    __________________________
    http://zakon.rada.gov.ua/cgi-bin/laws/main.cgi?nreg=563-12
    
    Верховна Рада Української Радянської Соціалістичної
    Республіки п о с т а н о в л я є:
    
    1. Оголосити з 15 березня 1991 року всі землі Української РСР
    об'єктом земельної реформи.
    
    2. Здійснення земельної реформи покласти на обласні, районні,
    міські, селищні і сільські Ради народних депутатів і Раду
    Міністрів Української РСР.
    Доручити Раді Міністрів Української РСР в межах існуючих
    штатів вирішити питання про створення відповідного органу для
    здійснення земельної реформи.

• 2010.08.25 | Сергій Вакуленко

  Мотиль bis

  Would You Buy a Used Car from Yanukovych?’
  by Alexander J. Motyl
  Kyiv Post, 22 August 2010
  
  This ongoing discussion I am having with Adrian Karatnycky about Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych is beginning to resemble the kind of conversations I used to have with Soviets back in the days of the Cold War.
  
  You say A, they say –A. You say B, they say –B. After a while, you begin to realize that you and they inhabit different worlds, have different values, see different things, and really can’t agree on anything. At which point, you realize that the only thing to do is raise your glass of vodka and propose a toast to peace.
  
  So, rather than prolong an endless spiral of incompatible views, let me just focus on a few general points—for the last time.
  
  First, notice that Adrian Karatnycky’s best-case argument in support of Yanukovych runs like this: The Orange governments were imperfectly democratic, corrupt, and inefficient—which is quite true—and Yanukovych’s government is no better. That is to say, Yanukovych’s main claim to fame, according to Karatnycky, is that he is no worse than his predecessor Yulia Tymoshenko.
  
  So, for starters, let’s agree that Karatnycky’s very best defense of Yanukovych boils down to the claim that he’s lousy, but, hey, so were the other guys.
  
  Second, notice as well that Karatnycky avoids details about the dismantling of democracy. Sure, it’s always more efficient to have a working majority in parliament — who would dispute that? — but that’s not the issue.
  
  The question is: how was that majority formed? And the answer is: by violating constitutional procedures. To which Karatnycky says: but, heck, they were being violated anyway! Perhaps — but never so openly, never so crudely, never so purposefully. Here, alas, is where the comparison with the Gleichschaltung really does merit some consideration.
  
  Third, notice that Karatnycky really does trust the Party of Regions. They’re, basically, OK guys who want nothing but the best for their country.
  
  Now, were that indeed the case, discussions could focus on policy—and the Party of Regions and its critics could easily disagree for the good of Ukraine.
  
  Unfortunately, the reality is rather different: the Party of Regions wants power for the sake of power. It wants to rule. Alone. Everything. All the time. Controlling the Parliament and the Cabinet and the Presidency is therefore not enough. The governors must be subordinated, the capital city Kyiv must be captured, university autonomy, freedom of assembly, and press freedoms must be curbed, and the secret police must be mandated to sniff out dissenters. Oh, and the city councils and the mayors must be subordinated — as indeed they will be in forthcoming local elections in October.
  
  Why? Because the Party of Regions has — surprise! — rigged the rules that permit only parties — and not blocs (like, er, the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc) to run candidates.
  
  Let me confess: to my mind, trusting the Party of Regions is like trusting the Communist Party of the Soviet Union — which, by the way, happens to have generated the vast majority of the voters, members, and functionaries of the Party of Regions.
  Now here’s the kicker. Karatnycky says, “There is reasonable diversity of views within the party of Regions and between the coalition members with pro-free market and more statist currents both represented. There is also a healthy rivalry for influence between factions in the Party of Regions that are jockeying for influence.”
  
  For old Sovietologists like me, this sounds like just the sort of unpersuasive argument that used to be made by the Soviets back in Brezhnev’s days. Notice that all this “healthy” competition appears to be confined to the Party of Regions and its allies in Parliament. That these allies were acquired in violation of the Constitution — and usually for hefty bribes in the hundreds of thousands of dollars — goes unsaid in Karatnycky’s account. That the bona fide opposition is being marginalized, ignored, and increasingly subject to judicial sanctions also goes unsaid.
  
  Fourth, notice that Karatnycky provides no details of real economic reform. Not vague statements of intent — but real policies that really promote real economic reform. Surely a party and leader who have been preparing themselves for power for five years, who claim to be professionals par excellence, would have some idea of how to jumpstart the economy in the half year they’ve been in power?
  
  But can Ukraine’s president be trusted? His personal or political background provides no such grounds.
  
  Surely free-marketeers would appreciate that entrepreneurship is the key to Ukraine’s economic revival? Surely anybody with even a hint of capitalist convictions would appreciate that ruinous taxes will ruin the economy? Surely tough bargainers wouldn’t have extended Russia’s Black Sea Fleet basing rights in exchange for ephemeral gas price discounts?
  
  Surely defenders of property rights wouldn’t have permitted a Russian firm to acquire a major enterprise in Luhansk in a manifestly rigged auction?
  
  And on and on and on...
  
  Readers of this site should appreciate that this list of embarrassing questions really is endless. And Ukrainian democrats in Ukraine raise them all — sometimes heatedly, mostly coolly, but always fearfully. They know that Yanukovych can drive their country into the ground.
  
  Even if he’s the “good tsar,” the sad reality is that he’s surrounded — or, more exactly, surrounded himself — with reactionaries, troglodytes, corruptioneers, and incompetents.
  
  Now, Karatnycky’s response to all these qualms appears to be: but wait a second! Yanukovych is a regular guy. He can be trusted. He’s got big plans. Don’t worry: give him the benefit of the doubt and all will be well.
  
  But can Ukraine’s president be trusted?
  
  His personal or political background provides no such grounds. A twice-convicted felon as a youth, Yanukovych the mature politician then completed two degrees in two years while working full-time running Donetsk province. Either the guy’s a genius, or running Donetsk is a piece of cake, or — wait — maybe the degrees aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on or — wait — maybe someone did his homework.
  
  But bygones are bygones, right? Surely what matters is Yanukovych’s recent record: that must provide grounds for trust, right?
  
  Let me remind readers that this is the man who conspired in the falsification of elections in 2004 that led to the Orange Revolution. This is the man who, still, cannot accept that popular upheaval as anything but a CIA-financed anti-Russian plot. Which is a bit like claiming that the civil rights movement in America was the product of “outside agitators.”
  
  But forget that, too. The bottom line is: What has Yanukovych done with all the power he’s amassed in the last half year?
  
  And the answer is: zilch.
  
  But let’s give Adrian Karatnycky the benefit of the doubt and agree that Yanukovych is a swell guy. So what? Even if he’s the “good tsar,” the sad reality is that he’s surrounded — or, more exactly, surrounded himself — with reactionaries, troglodytes, corruptioneers, and incompetents.
  
  Would you want him to be president of anything besides Ukraine — say, a firm or a regional organization or a country?
  
  Or, more to the point: Would you buy a used car from Yanukovych?
  
  Before you answer that: let’s drink to peace!

• 2010.08.25 | Сергій Вакуленко

  Завваги Оксани Шевель

  From: "Oxana Shevel, Prof." oxana.shevel@tufts.edu
  AAUS List, 20 August 2010
  
  [Written before the rejoinders by Karatnycky and Motyl]
  
  This is a very stimulating and thought-provoking exchange. I will be assigning both articles to my students.
  
  As for the question of Yanukovych's regime democratic credentials, I too no longer believe that he deserves the benefit of the doubt. My question to Adrian and others who may still do would be what exactly would have to happen before you can stop calling the actions of the government democratic. Banning demonstrations all together is not ok but blocking demonstrators by police in a side street is ok? Firing professors not ok but having rectors sign promises to SBU that they would mind their students' political activities is ok? It is easy to take any one instance in isolation (be it TV channel licensing, SBU visit to rectors, obstruction of demonstrators, detainment of Lange, blogger harassment, you name it) and try to convince yourself that this is just an isolated incident, just the overzealous lower level actors, while good democrat Yanukovych says how he's angered by it, etc. In other words, is your belief in Yanukovych's democratic credential even falsifiable, and if so how exactly?
  
  I catch myself doing thought experiments: could something like this happen in the US? In Poland? In Ukraine under Yushchenko? Sadly, the answer is often no. To my mind, the fact that Yanukovych says that he supports democracy is meaningless. All autocrats claim to be democrats.

• 2010.08.25 | Сергій Вакуленко

  Завваги Олександри Грицак

  From: Alexandra Hrycak hrycaka@reed.edu
  AAUS List, 20 August 2010
  
  I am also finding this exchange stimulating and thought-provoking. I see from Adrian's reply that he asks us to take a close look at the pattern of behavior exhibited by the Yanukovych administration over this half year. Doing so, he says, we will see that Ukrainians are "tired of protesting" (but that they still possess the inalienable right to demonstrations), we will also see that a lot of Ukrainians are happy with Yanukovych, etc.
  
  Let's consider an opposing perspective, that of one of Ukraine's leading human rights advocates. Yevhen Zakharov is the head of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union and co-chair of the Kharkiv Human Rights Group. Zakharov is arguably one of Ukraine's leading human rights monitors. He believes that there is considerable evidence that the new administration is using the Interior ministry to impose authoritarian controls on Ukraine; he also notes that these are in violation of Ukrainian law (we can add, these actions also contradict Ukrainian obligations under its international human rights treaties).
  
  Zakharov finds that a disturbing reversal of the Interior Ministry's prior stance on human rights has come about since the election. Zakharov makes a sound and very convincing case for viewing the state as having undertaken an authoritarian crackdown on basic civil liberties.
  
  I would be interested in hearing more from Adrian or others who view the Yanukovych administration's human rights record with favor. Zakharov's recent article in the Kyiv Post has me convinced otherwise. Since his article provides evidence suggesting that we should not buy Adrian's argument that democracy is not in peril, I will here sum up the main points Zakharov makes (for the full article, see "Assault on human rights under way," [see item 17 in this UKL]
  
  1. The current minister appears to have closed off access points human rights groups were using to monitor the behavior of the Interior Ministry. In 2005, within the Interior Ministry a Public Council on Human Rights was created under then-Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko, co-chaired by Zakharov. He states that this body regularly met and did a great deal of work over the past 5 years, but it has not been permitted to meet since Mohylyov became the new Interior minister.
  
  2. A recent directive increases the powers of Interior Ministry officials by calling for “constant control over the stay of foreign nationals on service structures, carry out thorough checks of foreign nationals’ documents, give particular attention to whether they have registration cards issued by border guards.”
  
  - Zakharov points out that this order is in violation of existing laws, which forbids such categorical surveillance. It also helps to place the detention of Lange into a broader perspective - as Oksana notes, we can see that Lange is no isolated incident but rather, part of a broader policy of using state surveillance against foreigners.
  
  3. A new directive restricts freedom of movement and introduces Soviet style surveillance: according to Instruction No. 292 from April 23, railways are to re-introduce obligations that ticket sales require passengers to provide full names, dates of birth, and the number of a person’s ID. Such data were in the Soviet era commonly used against groups or persons critical of the government. This type of surveilance is in violation of rights to privacy and reintroduces state surveillance over one of Ukraine's most common forms of public transportation.
  
  Broadly, Zakharov makes a case that gross violations of the right to peaceful assembly have been observed on a staggering scale: Zakharov points out that 350 articles have appeared in the media criticizing how the police handled peaceful gatherings, such as protests. In other words, in less than half a year, more media criticism of state repression of public demonstrations has appeared than in the three previous years (2007, 2008, 2009). He also expresses concern over recent evidence of a resurgence in violence used against detainees ("From June 11-14 alone, four deaths were reported as a result of police actions. Another victim ended up in emergency care.")
  
  Zahkarov provides examples of systematic human rights violations resulting from the Interior Minister's own new policies and troubling signs that the Ukrainian state is once again using the police to impose new (Soviet style) forms of surveillance over citizens as well as foreign nationals, thus inhibiting freedom of movement, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. Why would he write this if everything was good with the state of democracy in Ukraine?

• 2010.08.25 | Hadjibei

  Re: Дискусія Мотиля з Каратницьким про Януковича

  Каратницький - типовий західний ліберал і намагається навіть у купі лайна розгледіти золото.
  Мотиль більш реалістичний і гостріший в аналізі ситуації і більш консервативний. Мої симпатії - на боці Мотиля.
  Януквичу і Ко, щоправда, ці "аналізи" до одного місця. Їм клізми все одно в Кремлі ставлять. Тим паче, що Гамерика впевненою ходою рухається на дно і її дослухатимуться все менше і менше, бо нового Рейгана на горизонті не видно.
  згорнути/розгорнути гілку відповідей

  • 2010.08.25 | Уважний читач

    Старого Рейгана також не було видно на горизонті

    Аж поки не вигулькнув. Але щоби знаходити сенс у дискусії про демократичність Януковича дійсно потрібно бути щонайменше професором, і мабуть не ближче ніж в Америці.