Tymoshenko seeks to reunite ‘orange team’

By Andrew Beatty

Date: 02/02/06

Yulia Tymoshenko, one of the leaders of Ukraine's 'Orange Revolution', said that the government must reunite to tackle the country's "clans" of oligarchs, if progress was to be made towards joining the EU.

Tymoshenko, who was sacked as prime minister in September 2005 after government infighting, lamented the country's lack of progress towards joining the EU and called on President Victor Yushchenko to reunite the "orange team" at upcoming elections.

Tymoshenko described the split as "a grave mistake" and said Yushchenko's decision to deal with remnants of the old regime in appointing her successor had caused "severe disillusionment".

"It has produced a really serious slow-down on Ukraine's path to Europe, but my hope rests with the parliamentary elections," she said.

"I think we underestimated the potential of the old clans to adjust and survive and to use their network of vested interests to corrupt the new authorities," she told European Voice during a visit to Brussels yesterday (1 February).

While in government, Tymoshenko had announced a swathe of renationalisations, seen as a move to quell the power of Ukraine's oligarchs who control much of the country's strategic industries.

Following her sacking, the 44-year-old Tymoshenko vowed to run separately from her former ally. Now she said the recipe for the way out of the current malaise was for the orange team to reach a compromise.

"It could provide a new environment and a new countdown, at last, to the positive changes that we hoped would happen immediately after the orange revolution," she said.

The 26 March polls are seen as crucial to the country's future following the introduction of constitutional reform which gave increased powers to the prime minister.

On Wednesday (1 February) MEP Marek Siwiec, the head of the Parliament's EU-Ukraine delegation, said the vote would decide whether the promises of the orange revolution "will be fulfilled or whether they will be forgotten".

The split between Tymoshenko - one of the country's most popular politicians - and Yushchenko has bolstered the position of Victor Yanukovich, the man backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and former president Leonid Kuchma.

A recent poll put Yanukovich's Party of the Regions at 31% of the vote, ahead of both Tymoshenko and Yushchenko's parties.

"One thing is clear, if Yanukovich would win the parliamentary elections then the foreign policy orientation of Ukraine would change dramatically in the opposite direction," said Tymoshenko.

"There is no moral right for anyone from the orange team to strike a deal or form a coalition with Yanukovich because this would be moral suicide."

Tymoshenko saved her most searing criticism for the government's handling of last month's gas dispute with Russia. She recently backed a successful vote of no confidence in the government over the deal which was made with Russia.

"I promise if I win the elections I will ensure we will investigate if it was corruption, which I believe it was.

"What I know for sure is that without strong political support from the top, contracts like this so-called gas deal would never be possible."

But Tymoshenko shied away from any direct criticism of Yushchenko. "I tend to believe that the president does not have full information about the case," she said.

Interview with Yulia Tymoshenko, one of the leaders of Ukraine's 'Orange Revolution', and former Primer Minister. Tymoshenko was dismissed from her post in September 2005 after government infighting. In the interview she lamented the country's lack of progress towards joining the EU and called on President Victor Yushchenko to reunite the 'orange team' at the upcoming Parliamentary elections on 26 March 2006.