Eurasia Daily Monitor

June 7, 2010


Viktor Yanukovych was elected on February 7 and inaugurated as Ukraine's
fourth president on February 25. June 5 marks his first 100 days in
office.

Yanukovych won the 2010 Ukrainian presidential elections by the lowest
margin in Ukrainian history (3.5 percent, compared to the traditional 8
to 16 percent) and is the first president to be elected with less than
fifty percent of the vote. He won the same number of regions (ten out of
27) but with fewer votes than he received in December 2004, despite four
out of five years in opposition and a severe financial and economic
crisis.

Yanukovych's weak electoral victory has not prevented him from launching
a counter revolution in domestic and foreign affairs that overturns the
work of Ukraine's first three presidents. The two main counter
revolutionary projects are the move from a Ukrainophile to a Russian-neo
Soviet national identity (EDM, May 10). Ukraine has moved 180 degrees
from Yushchenko's pro-Western single vector to a pro-Russian single
vector foreign policy. As leader of the Party of Regions, Yanukovych
promised to pursue three policies after his election. First, forming a
government composed of "professionals" and implementing a reform
program, building political stability, and taking steps towards national
integration.

During Yanukovych's first 100 days in office none of these three
policies have emerged. The government is led by former Kuchma era
officials mainly in their late 50's or early 60's and therefore their
careers began in the Leonid Brezhnev "era of stagnation." No reform
program has been put forward. Political instability is far more likely
as a consequence of the counter revolution underway. Meanwhile,
Ukraine's regional divide has deepened, not improved, itself an outcome
of these policies.

Yanukovych's election was accompanied by six myths that fell apart after
the counter revolution was unfurled. Unfortunately, these served to
disorientate Western policymakers and analysts during his first 100 days
in office:

1. Yanukovych was more likely to bring stability than Yulia Tymoshenko.
Yanukovych's counter revolution in Ukraine's national identity and
foreign policies may introduce greater instability in the country
(Oleksandr Paliy, Ukrayinska Pravda, May 28).

2. Yanukovych learnt the lessons of election fraud in 2004 and recast
himself as a democrat. This claim never quite stood up to scrutiny as
Yanukovych did not accept the 2004 election results, arguing that there
was no fraud involved and claimed that he was the object of a planned
"US-backed conspiracy" (Orange Revolution). His views on 2004 only
hardened over the past five years as no criminal charges were ever
instituted against the organizers of the fraud.

The spring 2009 congress that launched Yanukovych's candidacy was
"respectable and modern," Ukrayinska Pravda (April 25) reported. The
April 23 congress that passed the leadership back to Prime Minister,
Nikolai Azarov (the Party of Regions first leader in 2001-2003) was a
"party congress from the Soviet era" with the leadership question taking
place "according to the best canons of a CPSU congress" (Ukrayinska
Pravda, April 25, 2010).

3. Tymoshenko, not Yanukovych, if elected would become the main threat
to Ukrainian democracy. The first 100 days of the Yanukovych presidency
has shown that his authoritarian tendencies were always greater. He was
governor of Donetsk from 1997-2002 during which it became Ukraine's only
region with a similar political culture to Russia denoted by one party
holding a monopoly of power. The constitution has been repeatedly
infringed and parliament has been sidelined when the Stability and
Reforms coalition was established and the Black Sea Fleet basing
agreement was extended.

Media censorship has re-appeared leading to the formation of the Stop
Censorship! NGO, with 500 journalists amongst its members from
throughout Ukraine (http://www.telekritika.ua/news/2010-05-22/53128).
Opposition leaders are being subjected to politically inspired criminal
charges
(http://www.telekritika.ua/media-continent/monitoring/medialiteracy/2010
-05-28/53250). Protests have grown against police brutality following
the death of a Kyiv student in police custody and police brutality
against protestors in Lviv and Kharkiv (Ukrayinska Pravda, May 31, June
3).

4. Yanukovych's pro-Russian program was dismissed as unlikely to be
implemented if he were to be elected. Yanukovych would become a
"Kuchma-2," pragmatic, working with centrists and national democrats,
and return Ukraine to a multi-vector foreign policy.

This myth misconstrued Yanukovych and the Party of Regions as
"pragmatists" when they had evolved in the post-Kuchma era into an
ideological political force that defended and represented the Eastern
Slavic, Russophone and neo-Soviet political culture of Eastern-Southern
Ukraine. Yanukovych and the Party of Regions receive support from
ex-communist voters and have twice entered coalitions with the communist
party. In the Crimean parliament, the Party of Regions has formed
coalitions with Russian nationalists and the national-Bolshevik
Progressive Socialists (EDM, March 2).

5. Russia equally supported Tymoshenko and Yanukovych; a view echoed
repeatedly by President Yushchenko. As EDM (January 22, 29) highlighted,
Russia gave its backing to Yanukovych, a factor evident since his
election. Since 2005, the Party of Regions has a partnership with the
Unified Russia party led by Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin. Fatherland,
the party that Tymoshenko leads, is the most active Ukrainian party in
the European parliament and a member of its European People's Party
group. The Party of Regions is not a member of any European
parliamentary group.

6. The oligarchs are ready to become taxpaying, bona fide businessmen
and support tackling corruption. This view, echoed by Western analysts
such as Anders Aslund and Adrian Karatnycky (Kyiv Post, April 14, May
27), has proven to be unfounded. The oligarchs are interested in
subsidized gas, which the gas lobby that controls Ukraine's foreign
policy and the Yanukovych administration has provided (EDM, March 18).

US-style "robber barons," with which Ukraine's oligarchs are often
compared, only became bona fide businessmen when they were forced by the
state; they did not do so of their own volition. Ukraine's oligarchs are
comfortable with the country's partial reform equilibrium and an
unreformed energy sector. Big business seeks to ingratiate itself with
the new authorities and oligarchs are a threat to Ukrainian democracy as
they control television where censorship is being re-imposed.

Yanukovych's first 100 days in office has not fulfilled his election
promise of reforms, stability and national integration. Meanwhile, he
has introduced policies (such as on Sevastopol) that were not included
in his election campaign.

--Taras Kuzio