Ukraine looking eastwards
M.HARESHAN
January 20, 2010
It would be redundant to say that the presidential election in Ukraine this year are especially important not only to the country itself, but also to the future of the entire Europe, if not of the Eurasian region overall, because it is quote obvious that, while in 2004 the orange revolution ‘enthroned’ Viktor Yushchenko as president to guide the country along the track of Euro-Atlantic and EU accession, what has happened, in fact, on the international political stage shows how important this particular election is. Shortly after Yushchenko’s victory, in February 2006, at Munich, via its most authorized voices, Russia bluntly said NATO expansion including Ukraine would be reasons for an armed conflict. Faced with Russia’s inflexible stance, the NATO summit in Bucharest avoided granted Ukraine or Georgia the Membership Action Plan, while leaving the door open for them for a subsequent accession, in the final document. Very recently – December 2009, the Valdai Group bringing together reputed Russian experts and officials stated the same thing a month before the presidential election in Ukraine.
The result of this year’s presidential election is expected to have a crucial importance, as it will revalidate Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic orientation or it will place it on the East orbit, where Russia understand to keep its status as a major global power with interests in the ex-Soviet space in general and in Ukraine in particular.
But who are the candidates in the presidential election this year?
The old orange revolution leader and incumbent president who won then to put the country on the Euro-Atlantic path, Viktor Yushchenko, is only supported by 6 per cent of the voters, as suggested by the polls and verified by Sunday’s election. His popularity has been decisively undermined by the ongoing differences in the orange coalition, by the accusations going between him and Yulia Tymoshenko – the other charismatic leader attached to the country’s Western geopolitical orientation. The economic crisis and its inherent hardships, endemic corruption yearly gas wars with Russia, the Ukrainian political and economic oligarchy are only some of the vectors of the loss of prestige of the current president. Polls suggest that 70 per cent of Ukrainian voters would like to have a strong leader, capable of leading with an iron hand. And that leader, the voters decided, cannot be Yushchenko.
His main opponent in 2004, the head of the Party of the Regions, massively supported by Russia, Viktor Yanukovich, had been credited by polls ahead of the first round of election with over 30 per cent. Sunday’s election with the vote counting still pending gives him approximately 36 per cent. He has capitalized on the dissatisfaction if the public with the failures of the Yushchenko - Tymoshenko governance, so he didn’t have to clarify of detail on his programmatic views during the election campaign. It is, however, known that he is the partisan of close relations with Russia, an opponent of Ukraine’s accession to NATO and the EU. His electoral pool is made up not only from people unhappy with the Yushchenko regime, but also of the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine – over 20 per cent of its 46 M inhabitants. His core on Sunday recommends him as a major competitor in the runoff election on February 7.
Yulia Tymoshenko is in the second place in this power triangle Ukrainians have become accustomed with for years. She got around 25 per cent on Sunday. Starting off as an emblematic figure of the orange revolution, over the past few years she has been in a stormy political relationship with Yushchenko. She has recently started a close relation with Russia and said she did not intend to lead the country into NATO, but she was in favour of the EU accession. While she has recently committed herself to bringing the country into the EU in five years, although Brussels has not accepted Kiev’s commitment to becoming a member by starting accession talks, she also said that ‘Ukraine, as a gas transit state, is and will be a reliable partner, and the contract that was signed between Ukraine and Russia for ten years is the legal basis of this stability and predictability’. What she meant by that is that the state that is found in a contact zone between Russia and the EU would act as a buffer with a predictable conduct in the following ten years. It was an attempt at winning over voters inclined towards the West and those who liked the East more, and even people who wanted to keep neutrality.
Among the 18 candidates in the first round on Sunday there was also the former head of the central Bank, billionaire Sergey Tigipko, who gathered about 13 per cent of he votes. Number four was ex-FM Arsenyi Yatseniuk, an independent candidate. The orientation of these two candidates’ voters in the runoff will be very important for the election of the new president.
Unquestionably, the Russian factor plays a crucial part in the outcome of the 2010 presidential election in Ukraine. Over 80 per cent of the voters – according to polls cited by the Russian press – want good relations with Russia and many reject the accession to NATO (no candidate had it in his/her electoral programme). With Russia acting more discretely to influence the result this time unlike 2004, many observers could nevertheless realise that its favourite was Yanukovich. Tymoshenko’s policy is unpredictable and not good for the bilateral relations as far as Moscow is concerned. The relations between the two countries are loaded with true challenges for Moscow, such as the extension of the Crimea navy base lease post 2012, the gas transit, the NATO accession or the EU membership application. Russia wants to be certain that all those issues will be favourably solved. This is why last summer the Russian president said he would not send an ambassador to Kiev as long as Yushchenko was the president and now he’s speeding up procedures to have him set up there.
The competitors in the runoff election in Ukraine are therefore Yanukovich and Tymoshenko. It is difficult to anticipate a winner. The result on February 7 will depend on the various political agreements to be concluded or on the deeply highlighted trends of the voters. The first round has at least demonstrated that Ukraine is insistently looking at the East, even Tymoshenko having had to make some concessions in that respect. The essential thing is that, no matter who wins, the various issues Ukraine has will most certainly not be dealt with overnight. The country is in a bad economic state which calls for daring measures that need a political consensus which is difficult to get given the constitutional provisions establishing the president and the premier’s powers. Tymoshenko will still be the prime-minister until the early or term elections. The Western orientations seeded by the orange enthusiasm of 2004 and devoted to consolidating national identity and independence will find it difficult to conciliate with a possible enhanced rapprochement of the East.
And last, it is little probable that Russia, through its policy concerning Ukraine, will find a non-imperialist line of conduct convenient for the majority of the population of a country bordering the EU.
