The period after a democratic revolution is generally the most volatile, so there isn????????t time to lose. Yushchenko needs to step up, whip his party into line, and take control of his job for the betterment of the country. He may also have a tough decision ahead of him with the upcoming parliamentary election. Will he keep or drop Yulia? At this point, the latter may be the sad but needed necessity.

I wrote that back in July, but seriously, who thought that it would actually happen? The scandal started a couple of days ago, when Chief of Staff Zinchenko resigned saying that the new Ukrainian government is swamped in corruption and bribery. Perhaps not all that surprising.

A former top political aide to the Ukrainian President, Viktor Yushchenko, has accused several senior government officials of systematic corruption.
Oleksandr Zinchenko said those officials were undermining the goals of the Orange Revolution that swept Mr Yushchenko to power in January.

“Corruption is now even worse than before,” said Mr Zinchenko, who quit as state secretary on Saturday.

He is the first top official to resign since Mr Yushchenko’s poll triumph.

Now corruption and bribe-taking are growing in force

The surprise move is seen by some analysts as a sign of a struggle within Mr Yushchenko’s team, over influence and access to the president.

“With my resignation I am trying… to make both the president and his team understand the grave danger of the current situation,” Mr Zinchenko told a news conference in the capital, Kiev.

“Now corruption and bribe-taking are growing in force,” he said.

Mr Zinchenko specifically named Ukraine’s National Defence and Security Council head Petro Poroshenko and senior presidential advisor Olexandr Tretyakov.

He accused the two men of nepotism and also pressure on the judiciary.

He warned that the president could face a “counter-revolution” if he did not fire Mr Poroshenko and Mr Tretyakov.

I recall an article in the Kiev Post back in January arguing that Poroshenko would be a better prime minister than Tymoshenko, but given that the latter was the firebrand goddess of the revolution, Yushchenko had no choice but to appoint her. But really, that’s just scratching the surface. Poroshenko was appointed as the head of the National Security Council, making him still one of Yushchenko’s closest advisors. His position was given increased powers, some of which overlapped and conflicted with powers held by Prime Minister Tymoshenko. The fact is, Yushchenko wanted Poroshenko for prime minister, which is what led to these expanded powers for his position. Tymoshenko has always been something of a populist, and there are a great many number of economic crises and reprivatization matters that she has handled incredibly poorly. Beautiful she may be, but good governance hasn’t been her strong point.

This is where the basic conflict has arisen, a lot of clashing between Poroshenko and Tymoshenko. The government has also had a lot of problems working with the parliament, as it is still filled with old guard lawmakers from the pre-revolutionary days. This will likely change to a great degree when spring parliamentary elections are held; that is, if Yushchenko can keep his popularity. However, it has been falling of late, especially amid some real and accused instances of corruption within his government.

Due to constitutional amendments enacted back in December, parliament will also be given several powers previously held by the president this month. That means that Tymoshenko as the prime minister will have more powers, something that may not be so good for the economic health of the country. So given the recent accusations and this transfer of power, Yushchenko is faced with a couple of options: sack the government or personally take the hit. So he sacked the government.

Yushchenko appointed Yuriy Yekhanurov, governor of eastern Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, as acting prime minister.

Yekhanurov says a key priority will be to ensure stability. Yekhanurov worked from 1994-97 under President Leonid Kuchma as head of the State Property Fund, which oversaw the initial period of privatization in Ukraine.

Yushchenko blamed the absence of what he called “team spirit” for dismissing the government of Prime Minister Yuliya
Tymoshenko. He said interdepartmental conflicts were damaging the government.

“Every day I witnessed more and more confrontations among these institutions at first, then serious conflicts on various
issues, then backstage intrigues, which already started to affect the fundamentals of state policies,” he said.

Yushchenko also cited the need to keep true to the ideals of the Orange Revolution, of which was to cure the country of corruption. An article that SCSUScholars cites is one by Jeremy Page, which goes into a bit of depth of the coalition nature and various interests of the pro-revolution parties. It’s absolutely true that the unified show presented during those months existed only during that time, and it’s most apparent in the government’s inability to get most of the WTO reforms passed through the parliament, as speaker Lytvyn hasn’t be particularly helpful.

So now, a new government is being formed, one that supposedly won’t harbor the immense political ambitions of the previous cabinet, and one that has no ties to the powerful oligarchy.

His newly-appointed chief of staff, Oleg Rybachuk, vowed Friday that the new government would be free of the big business influence that had brought down the previous cabinet.

“You will not see business representatives in the new government,” Rybachuk told reporters during a televised press conference.

The appointment of Yekhanurov, a long-time Yushchenko ally with extensive experience in the executive branch who is not known for harboring political ambitions, was welcomed across Ukraine’s political spectrum and by investors.

“With the arch rivals now out of government, conditions may be in place for creating a new, truly united and reform-oriented cabinet,” wrote Dragon Capital, a brokerage firm in Kiev.

“In the longer term, we think Yushchenko’s abrupt move will prove justified as the post ‘orange revolution’ power struggle, exacerbated by the approaching parliamentary elections, threatened to completely relegate reforms to the back stage,” it said in a note.

What I will find especially interesting over the next several months, and especially come parliamentary elections, is what Tymoshenko will do. Poroshenko is a media oligarch with considerable influence, and the right-hand man of Yushchenko. I believe that he will still wield considerable influence with the administration despite not having retained an official position — yet. Tymoshenko will now be thrown into opposition against the government, hopefully to the degree that her popularity ends up crushing the old guard opposition in parliament. The fact is, the ties between Yushchenko, Poroshenko, and the new political oligarchy worry me. This editorial explains it pretty well.

Perhaps the expectations were always unrealistic. People who unite to oust one government, as the Ukrainians did with huge demonstrations, do not necessarily agree on what the next one should be, and the alliance was always shaky between Mr. Yushchenko, a former prime minister and central banker, and Ms. Tymoshenko, who made a fortune in the gas business. Mr. Yushchenko and Ms. Tymoshenko squandered the momentum generated on Kiev’s streets, struggling over control of lucrative industries, over relations with Russia and over how to cope with soaring energy prices. The impression was of a government with no focus.

On dismissing the government, Mr. Yushchenko declared that his one goal was to ensure stability. But the Ukrainian protesters wanted change. If Mr. Yushchenko hopes to salvage anything of their spirit, he needs to convince his country, and a very wary West, that he not only believes in democracy, free markets and the rule of law, but is also capable of leading Ukraine in that direction.

Exactly. The Orange Revolution was about change, not simple government stability. It’s a good thing that the old government has been sacked, as their infighting was damaging the country. Investors are liking the makeup of the new government, but the fact is, Yushchenko’s government has not fulfilled a great many of its promises to clean up pervasive corruption from the top down. If the intention of the new cabinet is to clean up the country where the old government wasn’t able, then this is indeed a necessary move.

But my doubts are not in the government’s ability to bring in foreign investment and economic growth, but in its ability from preventing the rise of a new, just-as-corrupt oligarchy. If that doesn’t get cleaned up, Ukraine could experience what Russia did in the late ’90s after a decade of economic growth but pervasive oligarchic corruption. One might think that such an era was done for with the overthrow of Kuchma, but its existence is incredibly worrisome. Newly appointed Prime Minister Yekhanurov was in charge of the insanely corrupt privatization deals made under the Kuchma government. If that doesn’t send the message to Ukrainian voters that things are still the same, I don’t know what does. Taras Kuzio, a top Ukraine analyst in my mind, explains to precisely at the end of this article, where she goes in-depth about some cozy deal-making:

Continued association with questionable businessmen such as Poroshenko could ultimately spell the end of the Yushchenko coalition. A Razumkov Center poll found that the number of Ukrainians who believed that business was being truly separated from politics had declined from 51% in April to 34% in August (Zerkalo Tyzhnia/Nedeli, August 27). If this trend is permitted to continue due to Yushchenko’s inaction, then the Ukrainian public could come to see him as little different from those in power in the Kuchma era.

As for Tymoshenko, perhaps she is always meant to be in opposition. She railed against Kuchma during street protests before Yushchenko was even a presidential candidate. She may now form the core opposition to the Yushchenko government, as the rest of the opposition parties are relatively weak and have no binding cause. If that happens, Yushchenko will finally have a check that ensures his government doesn’t sell the people out on issues like corruption. Tymoshenko may not be very good at governing, but she knows how to get people to understand that there is a problem and that the government needs to stop pleasing its campaign contributors.