Blue &Yellow: Politics and Economics in Ukraine

In April parliament scheduled the election for
October 25, as the two major caucuses, Tymoshenko's and the PRU
feared that President Viktor Yushchenko would call an early
parliamentary election. An earlier presidential election would have
precluded that possibility. Yushchenko appealed, and the
constitutional court on May 12 found parliament's decision to be
unconstitutional. In theory, parliament could try to set an early
presidential election date again, but this was no longer in the
PRU's interests after the break-up of the grand coalition talks
with Tymoshenko. Had the talks proven successful, Yanukovych would
need the current parliament to elect him as president in accordance
with Tymoshenko's parliamentary republic design.

As it is now clear that the next president will
be elected popularly, Yanukovych has lost interest in the fate of
the current parliament. Moreover, he has resumed his earlier calls
for snap parliamentary elections. Meanwhile, he wants the
Tymoshenko cabinet to continue (Inter TV, ICTV, June 28).

Prior to scheduling the election for January
2010, parliament rejected a bill drafted by an ally of Tymoshenko's
which called for holding the election in November. Only 42 people's
deputies voted for that bill, which showed the depth of
Tymoshenko's defeat (www.proua.com, June 23). It was in her
interest to hold the election sooner rather than later, since the
protracted financial crisis which hit Ukraine hardest within the
entire CIS region damaged the popularity of the prime minister -who
is also a presidential candidate.

Now Tymoshenko's chances of defeating Yanukovych
in the run-off which most probably will be held on February 7, 2010
(Interfax-Ukraine, June 23) appear quite slim. Furthermore,
Tymoshenko might not even make it into the run-off. The popularity
gap between her and the third most popular candidate, the liberal
prodigy Arseny Yatsenyuk (he turned 35 this past May) has been
within the range of just one to four percentage points over the
past six months. According to the most recent poll, conducted by
the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, 34.7 percent of
Ukrainians were ready to vote for Yanukovych in mid-June, 21.5
percent for Tymoshenko and 17.6 percent for Yatsenyuk (Zerkalo
Nedeli, June 27).