This entry is coming a bit late in the game, as many have already commented on PORA and it's problems, but I wanted to at least weigh in. For convenience I labled links to Russian-language sources with [ru] and subscription-only with [sub].

The Basic Ultra-Abridged Description of Pora

Pora sprung up in fall of 2004 as a primarily youth protest organization focused on the election of 2004. During the Orange Revolution, Pora played a big part in helping to organize people, coordinate them, and keep everything working in a peaceful manner. This is too their credit.

Pora is still around, or at least the people in the organization are still around. However, during the events in the fall, a second group calling itself Pora also appeared (the original being "Black Pora [ru]" the newer one "Yellow Pora"). Since January the split between the two Poras has made it difficult for the group to establish a Pora party line even though they now have a political party [ru] because at least some would like to get into the Parliament [ru] in the March 2006 election.

Deja Vu

 However, by the time the 1998 parliamentary election arrived, they had stopped doing so well. Chornovil had a great CV but a problematic authoritarian leadership style. In Spring of 1999, just before the 1999 presidential election, he died in a suspicious car crash. But even before Chornovil's death, a deep division was growing in the party[sub], and this accelerated after he died[sub].

Their candidate didn't do well in the 1999 Presidential election[sub]. Even during the Ukraine Without Kuchma protests in 2000, the natural place for an oppositionist party to shine, they were largely irrelevant. The remaining Rukh deputies joined in with Yushchenko's Nasha Ukrayina folks by 2001, and the party essential ceased to be of significance in its own right.

In the end, the Rukh party was disappointingly inaffective at advocating the cause of the Ukrainian people, despite their relative independence from business interests. Good intentions won't help Pora get any farther.

Place Your Bets Here

So what are the odds of Pora managing to affect Ukrainan politics? In this article[ru] in Zerkalo Nedeli, which I'm really disappointed is only in Russian, Serhiy Rakhmanin gives some not particularly decisive speculation on the group's fate.

In sum, he says that while it is natural for some of the young firebrands in Pora to want to stay out of politics and maintain ideological purity in its current somewhat anarchic form, it is also natural that some would like to promote the group's interests in government. They've been given a lot of leeway by Yushchenko's government, the politicals among them have a chance of becoming a recognized part of Parliament.

But my bets are against them managing to maintain themselves as a distinct party until March. I've seen too few examples of compromise and unity in people's movements in Ukraine.

So They Probably Won't Be Significant, So What?

The reason why it matters what happens to Pora is that if Pora or some other Orange Revolution-style opposition group does not establish itself as a legitimate form of opposition, the opposition Ukraine will have will continue to be Yanukovych and other foolishness. Yushchenko's government will continue making populist moves to win support away from the Yanus, and I am optimistic about their chances of being able to beat the Yanukovych crew next March. But along the way, they will have sacrificed a lot of fiscal responsibility.

It would be much better for Ukraine if Yanus were just a handful among the opposition, so that his name and his foolishness were not inextricably entwined with all opposition in the nation. It would be better for Ukraine, if his odd bunch of misfits were grouped together with a rabidly anti-Yanu radical youth movement type party when people voice opposition to certain policies by Yushchenko. (as I'm happy a lot of people on Maidan seem to be doing about the strange happenings with Zvarych) It would help shunt aside Yanu into the irrelevance he deserves and let the country move on.

Creating a Toxin-Free Political Climate

As Zerkalo Nedeli has also said, good democratic government needs good opposition. The Yushchenko government has already started initiating a lot of populist reform, the economic support for which is questionable. The kind of opposition that, in more democratically developed countries, helps hold the government to account for its policy decisions is needed for Ukraine to become one of those governments.

Under Kuchma, being in the opposition was a more basic decision. The things you had to oppose were obvious, like Kuchma's attempts to take away Ukrainians' right to vote for their President. They were too fundamental to constitute "policy concerns".

The threats were more basic, too. The opposition was not faced with problems appealing to voters, they were faced with having to withstand government persecution of them and their businesses and altruistically ignore government enticements to defect.

If Yushchenko's government manages to leech enough of the toxins out of the political climate that even rukhies like Pora can survive, it will be a big step forward for the country.