Prime Minister Yanukovych is a better option than new elections
Yushchenko is currently refusing to acknowledge the new coalition and has threatened to dissolve the Parliament. BYT and NU deputies are using the same kinds of disruptive tactics RoU was using until last Friday. Protesters are in the streets, and some, like BYT are calling for new election.
Are these the right moves?
No. First because NU and the SPU have already destroyed the Orange coalition: it's gone. Attempts to try and bring it back will not succeed, and so there is no use in carrying on. The Party of Regions was able to use it's noise as a filibuster until it could reach a deal with the Socialists. NU and BYT don't even seem to be trying to win them back, so of what use is the agitation?
Take yet one more step back: the thing that was supposed to unite the economic liberals and conservatives in the orange coalition was supposed to be fighting corruption. It's pretty clear that it didn't and would not have in the future. What other cause should bring Ukrainians out in support of them?
Maxed Out On Political Promises
Even assuming there were a chance of bringing back the Orange coalition, neither new elections nor protests will help.
It's possible, in watching the distasteful display in Parliament these days, to forget about the even less tasteful parties that were swept out in the last election: Vitrenko's band, the Ne Takers (the only party with a less competent campaign than NU), and all the contenders on technicalities (two dozen of them!). It would have been nice if Pora had made the cut, but not nice enough to go through the whole mess again. Remember what it cost to eliminate the deadwood deputies: four months of political posturing, allegations, and smear. All this while deputies were too chicken to make any major decisions and problems became crises. Ukrainians should not be forced to endure another four months of this for the privilege of possibly seeing deadwood bob up in Parliament again.
Beyond this, the last election was free and fair: a procedural triumph at the very least. Will the next one be as fair when held under extraordinary circumstances and probably in a rush?
Now about the protests. For starters, read Foreign Notes:
There are tents cities going up from PORA and others but PR has them too. If there’s a call for protests now, what will it be for? Corruption? After the allegations that accompanied the dismissal of Poroshenko and Tymoshenko? People think that Our Ukraine is as corrupt as RoU... So what we would be left with is a call for protests over what amounts to political differences. "Come out and protest their forming a different coalition!" To paraphrase a quote from a movie, that’s a helluva a concept to have men die for. It just ain’t gonna work.
The Orange Revolution had a real, tangible goal. It was against documented illegal activity. And it was a grassroots effort, much more against political corruption than it was for Yushchenko, as I've always said.
Current protests are just gatherings of angry people lead by politicians. The result? Viktor Taran of BYT scaring off RoU deputies by firing rubber bullets in the air. And Oleh Kalashnikov of PoR one-upped him by assaulting a journalist, destroying the tape in his camera, lying and saying it never happened, then saying he was "provoked".
The OR camps were up two months without violent incident: these new ones obviously don't have the same heart.
The Deal
The PoR-CPU-SPU coalition is likely to be corrupt, backsliding, and anti-democratic. Here's what else it might be:
If the NU people do their messy deals with RoU, they may be able to leverage out the Communists in the process. That would be a big step towards having a government with at least a little common sense. Distasteful compromise like this might even bring enough sense to the government to deal with the host of inefficiencies in the economy (as described in this IMF paper).
NU, BYT and supporters of the former orange parties might as well let Yanukovych try to fulfill his promise to sort out the gas crisis. No way to lose, just consider the possible outcomes:
- The Russian government takes the principled position that Russia should be selling gas to Ukraine openly at market rates - good policy which moves Ukrainian-Russian relations in a positive direction, good for forcing Ukrainian development along a sustainable route, good for reinforcing Ukrainian independence, and damaging to Yanukovych's credibility.
- The Russian government inks an old Belarus-style cut-rate deal, Ukrainians pay less for gas, and we at least have more confirmation about how things really work in the neighbor to the north.
- Actually, I'll amend that. It could be bad if Yanukovych sells off Ukrainian gas infrastructure in a fire sale, but one would expect that to tank his political career. This tends to dissuade rational politicians, unlike Yushchenko's party which is trying to give over control of the gas pipes, excuse me, "temporary joint control" of the pipes, to Gazprom. It's almost pathologically self destructive: Yushchenko is expending every effort to keep Yanukovych out of office just long enough for his people to forfeit control over a tremendous amount of Ukrainian infrastructure. The RoU-Reds can't do worse.
Letting the coalition stand also gives Ukraine a chance of getting into the WTO ahead of Russia (which may be getting closer, see this EDM article). If the only sound in the Rada is coming from noiseblowers, no progress will be possible. This is a time-sensitive issue: if Russia gains membership, and thus veto power, Ukraine's task will become exponentially more difficult.
Finally, there is at least a chance Ukraine can get a damn Constitutional Court. It's been over a year without any legal way to determine constitutionality. This has already complicated dozens of messes.
Lutsenko doesn't want to be a part of the Anti-Crisis CabinetFor these reasons, the neglect that will result from four months of non-government and the potential problems resulting from new elections are even worse than a PoR-CPU-SPU Cabinet. There is going to be corruption, the oligarchs will keep their power, and little progress is likely over the next five years. But the majorities in NU and the Socialists, by courting PoR, have already demonstrated that they didn't have the will to do otherwise.
What remains for Ukrainians interested in the democratic and economic development of their nation is only to try and support the deputies that behave least reprehensibly.
Lutsenko and Tymoshenko are looking good this week. [image - Axis]