I’ve received a lot of emails about this. They go something like, “Robert! I know how much of a fan of Yulia you are. What do you think about all this?” I wrote a post yesterday, but it was mostly in the context of the scandal and the sacking of the government. Now would be a good time to focus on Yulia, her side of the story, and what she plans on doing after being fired by Yushchenko.

Yulia’s appeal stems from the fact that she is not only beautiful, but bold and incorruptible. Revolutionary. The story being reported by all the press regarding the dismissal of her government is in the context of a major corruption scandal. According to Yulia, the reason Yushchenko fired the entire cabinet was to divert attention from those in his inner circle who are accused of being truly corrupt. And this is true, as he had the choice of doing nothing, firing certain people specifically, or sacking the entire government. If he had done either of the former two, he risked admitting that his inner circle is corrupt, so doing the latter completely diverts attention off of him. And it worked, but it just goes to show how much he may really know about what’s going on within his government. So in response to being fired, Yulia went on television for her first interview since the event. Here is what she said:

Äin response to a question phoned in from zhytomyr oblast about the reasons for sacking governent…Å

i read the press writing about how they president took such a brave step.

let me say that the president did not dismiss the government. he was hostage to his inner circle of advisors who peremptorily demanded it.

why did this happen?

reason number one: the terrible fear for their political future if my popularity continued to grow.

reason number two: because they couldn????????t operate their crooked schemes as long as oleksandr turchynov and were here to slap their hands every time they reached into the cookie jar.

and we nabbed them! they thought mistakenly at first that ukraine????????s economic system was big and complicated enough to exploit unnoticed.

reason number three: (and this is what the president had in mind) the sacking of government obscured allegations of corruption among yushchenko????????s inner circle.

sacking the government when you are accused of corruption is a rather illogical argument. but they needed media attention to obscure corruption allegations against them and point ÄattentionÅ in a different direction.

i went through a stack of clippings from international media before coming on the air. and what do I read? no one is writing about poroshenko and martynenko ??????? they all say that the government was sacked in the context of a corruption scandal. that was the main aim ???????? to point the finger at the cabinet.

every person who knew worked in the cabinet knows that from the first day the prime minister tolerated no corruption. under any circumstances.

QUESTION: you say ???????they.??????? who do you mean?

yulia tymoshenko: poroshenko, tretyakov ??????? roman bessmertny ??????? martynenko ??????? and five or six more.

And here is something by Mykola Tomenko, and ally of Yulia’s who resigned along with Zinchenko:

“Tymoshenko and her team were fired because she did not want to work or ‘preserve unity among the team” Äby disregardingÅ allegations of corruption and the illegal activities of Yushchenko’s kum, Petro Poroshenko and his relatives,” said Mykola Tomenko, former deputy prime minister in charge of humanitarian affairs.

It is unknown whether or not Yushchenko knows about the corruption of his most inner circle. Yulia and the others have certainly shyed away from directly accusing him, instead placing the blame on those closest to him; such that they keep him in the dark about their activities and the true state of the country. Doing so would tarnish Yushchenko, thus tarnishing the ideals of the Orange Revolution. However, I find it pretty hard to believe that he is completely clueless about what is going on with the likes of Poroshenko and company.

While not a particularly good governor, being prone to populist policies, Yulia still remains the incorruptible goddess of the revolution. She was out in the streets, setting up tents, and protesting against the government years before the Orange Revolution, with Viktor Yushchenko as the opposition candidate, ever even took place. Abdymok offers a very important history lesson that Yulia is the original revolutionary against the current, corrupt system, while Yushchenko’s team only came in at the last act.

sept. 17, 2002

(where was yushchenko?)

ukraine????????s furious political standoff escalated on Sept.23, 2002 as opposition lawmakers — organized and led by yulia tymoshenko — took their protests off the streets and into the offices of the main state television station and the presidential administration.

viktor yushchenko and his supporters did not participate.

i remember bumping into evhen chervonenko talking with volodymyr polokhalo on the way home to change clothes (tymoshenko & co. had pitched tents around the whole presidential administration in a thunderstorm).

“why aren’t you at the protest camp,” i asked chervonenko.

“because i don’t belong in a tent,” he replied.

Yushchenko gives me the impression, more and more, like the Orange Revolution for he and his crew was about the simple transfer of power from the top to another section of the top. The political establishment in Ukraine is no less corrupt than the old one, something that is showing up in post-revolutionary Georgia as well. If Yushchenko doesn’t distance himself from these figures, he’ll be viewed increasingly so over time by the public at large. His approval rating have already dropped by the dozens while people continue to maintain that Yulia is incorruptible.

She will now continue to be the revolutionary that she always was. Now that she’s been fired, she’ll be going into opposition against the current government. Not in the way that the communists and Kuchma supporters do, but in a way that follows generally the same path of reform but with a completely different team. The difference will be not in vision, but who the people will choose to lead the way toward that vision.

10 September 2005 (RFE/RL) — Political divisions among the leaders of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution have deepened, with former Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko pledging to lead a rival political force against President Viktor Yushchenko in next year’s parliamentary elections.

Tymoshenko spoke on Ukrainian television last night, one day after Yushchenko dismissed her seven-month-old cabinet amid infighting and accusations of corruption among senior officials.

Tymoshenko stopped short of saying she would join Ukraine’s official opposition, but said she and her supporters would form a “parallel” force to Yushchenko’s backers to compete in the elections set for March 2006.

“I and Viktor Andriyovych ÄYushchenkoÅ will go to the elections in parallel ways,”Tymoshenko said. “It does not mean it is a war. There will be two different teams, with absolutely different people. I will not go to the elections with those people who have discredited Ukraine so much — I do not mean the president, but his closest circle.”

She was once against the constitutional amendments enacted by Kuchma back in December that would transfer certain authorities from the president to the parliament. Now she’s all for them. This is because after the parliamentary elections, the prime minister will be chosen by the parliament instead of the president. If she does well, she may get her job back, which means she’ll be able to do what she was meant to do instead of fighting with Poroshenko all the time.

Like I said in my previous post, perhaps it is best and even the right thing that Tymoshenko will be in opposition. The current opposition is in complete disarray, meaning that the current government has had no check on it to prevent corruption. Tymoshenko is the ultimate crusader against all such things, so the Yushchenko government will need to start watching its steps from now on. And unlike the current opposition, Tymoshenko won’t simply oppose everything the government does, but make sure the public knows that the government isn’t doing enough, fast enough. It’s the kind of opposition we’ve been waiting for.

If she can show the public that the Yushchenko government hasn’t lived up to its promises, even the most basic ones like economic reform and cleaning up corruption, her popularity can only go higher, which will make her a very heavy contender come parliamentary elections this spring. If she becomes prime minister under the new constitutional amendments, you can be sure that she’ll clean the entire government. The main difference between her and Yushchenko is that he and his team appear, at least, to want to reform the system, while Tymoshenko wants to wipe the system clean.

Normally, the former approach should always be taken for stability’s sake. But that’s not what the people wanted when they voted for Yushchenko. They wanted a completely new system, a new country. They wanted Kuchma’s corruption gone from their daily lives. But so far, nothing has really changed and the people know it. That’s why the glow of the Orange Revolution is fading. Tymoshenko, by going into opposition, will convince the public that change is still possible, and that she is still the one to bring it about. Don’t expect her to ever fade from the political scene.