Tymoshenko keeps orange hopes alive

In the second general election since the 2004 Orange Revolution, Ukrainians on Sunday (30 September) again failed to return a clear winner.

The party of Yulia Tymoshenko, a former oligarch and one-time prime minister, and the Party of Regions of the current Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych were neck-and-neck during vote-counting, with Yanukovych gaining a slight edge of just a couple of percentage points, at around 34%.

But teaming up with the other main pro-Western party, President Viktor Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine, which garnered some 14.3% of the vote, Tymoshenko is likely to come close to having a slim parliamentary majority, which would allow her to form a government.

Tymoshenko, who is currently in opposition, is seen as a pro-Western moderniser while Yanukovych, a former protégé of Ukraine’s last non-democratic ruler, with his main power base in the Russian-leaning east, has the bearing of an old-style apparatchik.

Tymoshenko was prime minister for a few months in 2005, a time marked by chaotic government and a breakdown in relations with her erstwhile ally Yushchenko. Political necessity is now forcing the two into an alliance again.

Tymoshenko has made no secret of her ambition to become Ukraine’s next prime minister and her strong performance, far above the gains predicted by most observers, has boosted her standing considerably.

But both Tymoshenko and Yanukovych claimed victory after the poll, raising fears of an extended period of uncertainty. President Yushchenko ordered an inquiry into suspected irregularities in Yanukovych’s stronghold in the east, though international monitors describe the elections as generally free and fair. Vote-counting in some precincts in the east was delayed, raising suspicions of foul play. Independent observers estimate that a significant portion of the votes for Yanukovych’s Party of Regions were falsified in certain precincts but to what extent this may have affected the overall outcome is difficult to assess.

But if there is one thing that Ukraine-watchers can agree on, it is that the rules of the game have fundamentally changed since the revolution. The assessment of most observers, that vote-rigging on the scale that triggered the revolution in the first place is today all but impossible, seems to have been confirmed. This is a remarkable achievement considering that Yanu-kovych was the intended beneficiary of the 2004 fraud and has the party machine needed to pull off large-scale vote-rigging or vote-buying (unlike Tymoshenko, whose party very much relies on the force of her personality).

The ongoing investigation into voting fraud notwithstanding, the main question in the coming days will be less who won than how the parties will build on the results they have achieved. Following a poll that appears to have been sufficiently free and fair to render its outcome broadly legitimate, despite the pervasive cynicism characteristic of Ukraine’s electorate, the post-election period will be the true test of the country’s political maturity.

The necessity for any leading party to go into a coalition will help put a brake on outsized personal ambitions. This is, after all, the nuts-and-bolts of politics: hammering out a coalition, trading pre-election promises, holding strong personalities in check. The key relationship will be that between Yushchenko, a much-diminished figure since the height of the orange protests, who will name the future prime minister, and Tymoshenko, whose strong showing gives her a moral claim on that job.

But where many observers describe the period since the fallout between Yushchenko and Tymoshenko as a time of "uncertainty" and "instability", Ivan Lozowy, a Kiev-based political analyst, sees a positive development. "Strong competition at the top is excellent for Ukraine as people get the idea that it is no longer one person pulling all the strings," he says. As long as political turmoil does not impede a booming economy, little harm is done by governments falling and new coalitions emerging. Indeed, Lozowy believes that transitional democracies need a different sort of politics from that practised in the more established liberal democracies of Western Europe - and Ukraine is getting just that.

In the second general election since the 2004 Orange Revolution, Ukrainians on Sunday (30 September) again failed to return a clear winner.