Plenty of news coverage on the election outcome, no surprise considering that the "villain" from the 2004 election won this time. Naturally, there is a need to re-evaluate Yanukovych now that he has won the presidential election. Adrian Karatnycky writes in the WSJ with this in mind. His line of thought follows that of Alexander Motyl that Yanukovych's win could lead to a more coherent political situation in Ukraine. That's possible, but haven't we learned from the post-Orange victory predictions that we are terrible at making predictions.The Economist makes a sound conclusion concerning this election.
In any event, this election was not about geopolitics but about Ukraine’s own governance and economy. The choice of Mr Yanukovich as president would be neither a disaster nor a breakthrough for Ukraine’s oligarchic political system. He would inherit a country with weak institutions, a struggling economy and a disillusioned population. He may not be able to deal with those. But at this stage it is less important than having a clear winner.
Alas, both Karatnycky and FT write as if Yanukovych were in the political wilderness for five years, skipping over his year long term as prime minister from 2006-2007. The FT calls his election victory "an extraordinary comeback", but wasn't his return as prime minister in 2006 more impressive considering that the man he beat appointed him? The 2006 elections also illustrated the political power of Regions, while also indicating that the public was still willing to vote for the "villain's" party. It showed that Regions could take advantage of the divided "Orange" team, as it did in this election.
Meanwhile, LA Times writes about the pressure on Tymoshenko to concede defeat and not dispute the results of the election. However I don't agree that this election was based on a West-East divide that the NY Times blog sees in Ukraine. While the Times blog post is right that the old Hapsburg portion of Ukraine sided with Tymoshenko, taking a look at the map above (via Ukrainska Pravda) one can see she won more than just that region. She took central Ukraine and oblasts east of Kyiv, which were not part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Its no surprise that Yanukovych took Donbas and the rest of eastern Ukraine, its the political stronghold of the party, not because of some historical border.
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