Contradicted from On High

I'm starting to think that there is an unspoken agreement in the YuGov that, for any issue, the will of the Cabinet will be represented by the first minister to "call" the issue. At least that's the only way I can explain this idiocy by State Property Fund Chief and Socialist Valentina Semenyuk:

Fund chief Valentyna Semeniuk told Gazeta Po-Kiyevski that the agency, which is responsible for state-owned property and its privatization, is conducting an inventory and looking into allegations of widespread misappropriations during Kuchma's decade in office.

"We have checked 65 percent (of formerly government-owned property), and the preliminary conclusion is: 20,000 businesses were stolen under Kuchma," the newspaper quoted Semeniuk as saying. [AP]

When Tymoshenko said back in February that thousands of businesses might be up for reprivatization she was quickly corrected by Yushchenko. Since then, the official number of likely reprivatization candidates has been thirty, but we've also dealt with investors scared off left and right. It was a massive failure for the YuGov, in term of attracting much needed foreign investment.

Publicized Sabatoge

Now Semenyuk comes along and repeats the same old talk about massive numbers of businesses that might be reprivatized. It's like the woman is trying to sabotage all potential for foreign investment and privatization revenues this year.

Wait a second. She is trying to sabotage all potential for FDI and privatization revenues - She's an unprogressive, unreformed Socialist. She has said from the start that she is opposed to more privatization. She's got a decade-long record of opposing privatization. Keeping in mind that she's head of the State Privatization Fund, she has said of privatization:

"I would like to say that the red line of economic security has been reached. The state retains only 22 per cent of production companies. Compared with the former Soviet countries, we have the highest level of capitalization. So, there is nothing left to sell, as it were."

[ICTV television, Kiev, in Ukrainian 1500 gmt 15 May 05; via BBC Monitoring; I commented on this statement in May here]

Privatization has gone ahead anyway, and I've mentioned that Semenyuk may not be doing anything more than posturing. But that's enough. When Socialist deputies joined the Communists and Party of Regions deputies in posing against WTO reforms, the Kyiv Post said, in effect: "We know that the YuGov and Nasha Ukrayina have been in alliance with the socialists from the start. But the Socialists have already broken the alliance, in spirit, by being willfully obstructionist against their own allies. Kick the bums out." My sentiments exactly.

However, Semenyuk isn't the only minister getting contradicted by Yushchenko these days.

Using Ministers As Lightning Rods

Just a couple entries ago I grumped that it seems impossible to kill the SES (Single Economic Space - I'm going to try to stick with this from now on, to avoid confusion between the Common Economic Space and Commonwealth of Independent States).

I had hoped that Ukraine had finally admitted that the deal was dead when Economic Minister Serhiy Teryokhin talked about moving on a few weeks ago. There was a huge flurry of reporting immediately after that, then Yushchenko and Tymoshenko contradicted him and said Ukraine will continue to try to work on this.

Which makes me wonder if: a) Teryokhin was speaking his mind as if it were the will of the YuGov, the same way Semenyuk did. b) Teryokhin was testing the skies for the YuGov, with the tacit consent of Yushchenko and Tymoshenko. If lightning struck him out of a media storm, then the YuGov would know that he had taken too controversial a stance, and how far the issue could be pushed.

There is precedence for the latter foreign relations strategy in Russia. Rather than taking locally popular but internationally untenable stances himself, Putin lets his allies voice them. In that way, he gets to rally Russians with slogans especially concerning foreign policy, then politely deny those slogans to foreign officials. The foreign officials get a visual display of what Russian people really want, and Putin gets to remain their more rational friend in government.

I've heard more than one person comment on this issue that Zhirinovsky (whose raison d'etre seems to be to make wild populists statements) is the man that foreign officials should look to for the "real" beliefs of Russian politicians. I like to think of his as the national id.

No Party Line, No Party

The problem with this strategy is that if Cabinet deputies go off voicing their own opinions and getting corrected by Yushchenko repeatedly, not only will the political incoherence further depress the YuGov's declining poll ratings (beautifully analyzed in this RFE-RL article), but analysts and voters are going to think of ministers as mere powerless talking heads. Politics in the nation will continue to be about a very small number of individuals and their values, rather than parties with values of their own.

Ukraine has long been a country with parties, but without party lines. The Communists are always easy to place, and the Socialists are at least consistently left-ish, but beyond them, things get very hazy. My theory on this is that since many politicians were just powerful local businessmen in politics for their own gain, and they couldn't voice this credo aloud, they joined on with whatever party seemed most advantageous, and switched parties and slogans when it suited.

If the YuGov really wants to prepare for the March 2006 election, it's going to need to place a lot more emphasis on having each party adhere to a single party political ideology. It's OK if Nasha Ukrayina and Tymoshenko's Fatherland party don't agree on everything, so long as Fatherland deputies are recognizably in agreement on a number of issues, and likewise NU deputies.

This will require a lot of policing of their deputies by Yu and Ty, but their reward will be that when March rolls around, they will be able to present deputies to voters whose views voters understand, and they will not be plagued by dissention in the ranks after the election. If they do no policing, I'm afraid that they will pick up large numbers of opportunist deputies in the build up to March, who will then quietly undermine the party goals in favor of their own goals as soon as they've used allegiance to the party to get elected.