Ukraine’s President: Doing it his way

Date: 07/02/04

After Georgia's “rose revolution”, some hope that Ukraine could be the next post-Soviet country to eject an unpopular autocrat. Alas, probably not

TO OPTIMISTS, Ukraine resembles Georgia before Edward Shevardnadze's spectacular, bloodless ousting last November. It has an unpopular president, rampant corruption, widespread poverty and a fragmented but feisty opposition whose leading light is a reformist ex-protege of the president. Better still, the leading lights, Ukraine's Viktor Yushchenko and Georgia's now President Mikhail Saakashvili, even studied together.

In Georgia, it was rigged parliamentary elections that triggered a popular revolt. In Ukraine, President Leonid Kuchma (who once made Mr Yushchenko his prime minister) is trying to twist the electoral system to his advantage. So when Mr Saakashvili visited his old college friend in Kiev just days after he had helped to overthrow Mr Shevardnadze, everybody wondered what sort of tricks he might teach him.

But the bigger mystery concerns Mr Kuchma's own plans. Some clues are provided by the behaviour of institutions that normally do his bidding. On December 24th the Rada, Ukraine's parliament, passed the first draft of a bill that would let it, rather than the people, elect the president. A week later the constitutional court allowed Mr Kuchma to seek a third term, on the grounds that the current constitution, setting a two-term limit, came into force after he was first elected. (That the previous constitution set the same limit did not bother the judges.) The opposition was furious, as was the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, which threatened to suspend Ukraine.

This week the Rada voted on the bill again. The article on parliament electing the president was removed. But the bill retains other provisions that, according to Yulia Timoshenko, an opposition leader, give so many powers to parliament as to leave the president all but toothless. That may open the way for Mr Kuchma's forces, which dominate the Rada, to keep control even if Mr Yuschenko wins the presidential election in October.

Mr Kuchma may not even be a candidate then. Only 7.5% of Ukrainians would vote for him today, says Igor Zhdanov at the Razumkov Centre, a think-tank. Winning might require such massive fraud that it would upset voters (and western governments). Then Mr Kuchma really would risk the same fate as Mr Shevardnadze. Besides, he has said repeatedly that he will not stand, and after recent health problems - Kiev was briefly awash with rumours of his death - many believe him.

Hryhoriy Nemyria, a political scientist at Kiev's Taras Shevchenko University, suggests that Mr Kuchma is giving himself options for keeping hold of power after he leaves. If the constitutional reforms are approved, the Rada could make him prime minister. But his surest way to guarantee influence, and a safe retirement, would be to pick his own successor.

The question is whom Mr Kuchma will prefer. It could even be Mr Yushchenko. Finding somebody suitable within the presidential circle would be hard. Three oligarchic clans dominate politics and the economy, and there is nobody besides Mr Kuchma whom all three like. On the other hand, all three probably dislike Mr Yushchenko more than anyone else. Some tycoons fear that, once in power, he and his team might probe the origins of their wealth. So to win, says Olexiy Haran at Kiev University's Mohyla Academy, Mr Yushchenko must reassure the fat cats.

Moreover, rather like Mr Saakashvili in Georgia, Mr Yushchenko surely wants to reduce Russia's influence in his country. That influence remains strong. Russian firms have been buying up Ukrainian assets, particularly in energy. Russia has been pressing Ukraine to let its Odessa-Brody pipeline carry Russian oil south to the Black Sea, rather than Caspian oil north to Europe. A spat over boundaries in the Kerch Strait, which runs between the two countries, ended in compromise last year: to pass through the strait to the Sea of Azov, warships from other countries will need the permission of both Russia and Ukraine. That could be embarrassing if Ukraine ever joins NATO.

Mr Yushchenko has the highest ratings of any politician, but he lacks a solid base in the central and eastern regions that are predominantly Russian-speaking. His victory in October is no certainty. Nor can placid Ukrainians be relied on to fill the streets the way that Georgians did. Mrs Timoshenko proposes to ask for volunteers from the huge Ukrainian diaspora as election observers to expose any fraud. Without such a safeguard, Mr Kuchma and his friends could yet swing things their way - whatever way that turns out to be.

After Georgia's 'rose revolution', some hope that Ukraine could be the next post-Soviet country to reject an unpopular autocrat, President Leonid Kuchma. Article suggest this is not likely to happen.

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