Blue &Yellow: Politics and Economics in Ukraine

Business Week has a good article that sums up the current economic crisis in Ukraine.  While the blog, Fistful of Euros, has a post on the economy's project performance this year, a 12% contraction in GDP. 

The election dispute in Ternopil's local election has ended poorly for BYuT. The Economist has an article concerning the recently completed election, where BYuT (for some reason they use YTB) came in fourth place with the Svoboda bloc coming in first. The article claims that the poor showing for the prime minister's party suggests a collapse in support nationwide. The US Open Source Center also comes to the same conclusion based on media analysis (Tymoshenko Defeat in Ukraine Election Shows Falling Popularity, March 20, 2009).  The Economist article downplays possible electoral manipulation and BYuT's decision not to campaign as significant factors in the party's loss.

YTB allegations that administrative resources in Ternopil were deployed in favour of United Centre, thus skewing the result, miss the point. Mr Tyahnybok’s Svoboda took 2.4 votes for every one claimed by United Centre, and there are no suggestions that its success was the result of administrative resources. The party’s success in the strongly nationalist region suggests that voters disenchanted with the current crop of politicians are shifting their support primarily to leaders espousing populist chauvinism as real wages decline, loan burdens increase and redundancies grow.

I don't think that BYuT missed the point, voter fraud is not a rare event in Ukraine and Svoboda is a fake party that's meant to draw votes away from major parties. What this election result suggests is that voters are more likely now to throw away votes,a  point made by the article. Its also risky taking too much from  the Ternopil situation.  EDM has a piece about Svoboda’s  fortunes and some background about the leader (Volume 6, Issue 56). 

Freedom, is essentially a party of one man, the charismatic forty year old Tyahnybok, who has long been a pariah of Ukrainian politics - for a good reason. Its original name was the Social Nationalist Party whose symbols looked very much like those of Hitler's National Socialist Party. Tyahnybok believes there are too many Jews and Russians in Ukrainian politics and economy so he suggests re-introducing the Soviet-era ethnic origin entry in passports in order to increase the percentage of ethnic Ukrainians in positions of power. Tyahnybok was expelled from Yushchenko's caucus in parliament in the early 2000s for an anti-Semitic and Russophobic speech. In his most recent interview, Tyahnybok said that he did not regret making that speech (Ukrainska Pravda, March 16). 

***

Freedom's victory is a worrying signal for democracy in Ukraine, yet it should not be overestimated. First, it won in only one of Ukraine's 27 regions, and this region is among the poorest and most nationalistic. Second, Freedom's campaign was reportedly supported by Yushchenko's team as a counterweight to Prime Minister Tymoshenko's party, which won the Ternopil election in 2006. It is hard to predict how Freedom will fare once this support is withdrawn.Third, Tyahnybok has a strong rival whose party if it chose to run in Ternopil would have been among the winners, as Tyahnybok himself admitted. This is thirty four year old Arseny Yatsenyuk, who is from the liberal camp. Despite his youth, like Tyahnybok this prodigy comes from western Ukraine and has managed to serve in a wide range of positions including as deputy CEO of a private bank, acting central bank head, foreign minister and parliament speaker. Yatsenyuk resigned from the latter post late last year to found his own party with an ambitious name, Front of Change.

The pre-summit meeting of 26 allied Defense Ministers held on February 19 and 20 in Cracow reviewed this troubled partnership in a revamped NATO-Ukraine Commission in the 26 + 1 format. Chairing the proceedings, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer gave assurances of "continue[d] support for Ukraine's [defense sector] reforms and preparations for NATO membership." The Commission would monitor the implementation of Ukraine's defense sector reforms and focus on the first Annual National Program (ANP) in that regard. "We are determined to continue to develop this strategic partnership," de Hoop Scheffer assured the Ukrainian delegation (NATO release, February 20).

Others struck a different note, however. German Defense Minister Franz-Josef Jung made it clear at the Cracow ministerial meeting that Berlin did not want ANPs with membership-oriented content for Ukraine and Georgia (Financial Times Deutschland, February 21). France was even blunter. During NATO's recent Security Conference in Munich, French President Nicolas Sarkozy took aim at Ukraine and NATO's open door in one swipe: "If you see the light in the window, it does not mean that you must go knocking at the door" (Ukrayinska Pravda, February 11).

Tymoshenko is now distancing herself from the goal of membership in NATO. In her speech at NATO's Security Conference in Munich she cited Russia's opposition to that goal and the split in Ukrainian public opinion regarding NATO. On that basis she argued that Ukraine's best option would be to join some kind of all-European collective security system in which Russia would also be a full participant (Ukrayinska Pravda, February 11). As she prepares to enter the presidential election campaign later this year, Tymoshenko is clearly and inevitably backtracking on her earlier support for Ukrainian membership in NATO.