Yushchenko not a serious contender in Ukraine election

Jan 12, 2010, 9:21 GMT

Kiev - Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko is running for re-election, but his campaign resembles more the final act of a tragedy rather than a viable attempt to stay in office, according to some political observers.

The leader of Ukraine's Orange Revolution has been criss-crossing the country in recent weeks, visiting factories and speaking to supporters on an virtually daily basis. But if the coming presidential elections were held today, the incumbent would receive less than 3 per cent of the vote, according to polls.

Ukraine's pro-democracy 2004 Orange Revolution propelled Yushchenko into office after hundreds of thousands of his countrymen took to the streets to protest at suspected fraud by his main opponent, Viktor Yanukovych - now the front-runner in this year's race.

Yushchenko enjoyed widespread support during his first year in office. Having demonstrated shoulder-to-shoulder to force the first fair election in Ukraine's history, many members of the country's usually warring political factions had high hopes of a real crack-down against the oligarchs who control most of the country's economy.

   'Hope is absolutely dead now; whatever belief people had things might be better is long gone,' said Vadym Konstantinov, a political scientist. 'It's natural Yushchenko is blamed.'

Opinions vary as to when, and how Yushchenko - a banking academic seemingly possessed with a broad mandate to put an end to oligarch capitalism and corruption - morphed into what has become practically a national synonymn for ineffectual leadership.

Yushchenko's former ally turned nemesis, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, has accused the president in campaign speeches of vetoing critical legislation, and undermining her efforts to run the government.

Yushchenko has countered that as 'a trained economist,' he had little choice but to reject initiatives by Tymoshenko he regarded as running roughshod over good government - be they her plan to pay pensions using money from the International Monetary Fund earmarked for bank recapitalisation, or her scheme to finance preparations for the Euro 2012 football championships by drawing on national gold reserves.

 'It is my job to protect the constitution, and I must stand on my priciples,' Yushchenko told the German News Agency dpa in a February 2009 interview. 'I will not permit anti-Ukrainian actions.'

But Yushchenko's long-established unwillingness to make concessions has repeatedly put him in conflict with his other political enemy, Yanukovych, a friend of big business who controls parliament's largest faction, Party of Regions, and supports Russia-friendly policies antithetical to Yushchenko.

Among the most widely-disliked of Yushchenko's initiatives, criticized by Yanukovych, has been a concerted state programme promoting the Ukrainian language. The policy includes a ban on the use of Russian in most legal and business documents, in almost all higher and much mid-level education, and in nationwide media.

Seen by Yushchenko as critical for 'the formation of a Ukrainian national consciousness,' Ukraine's current language policy has infuriated at least a third of Ukrainian voters, who speak Russian and resent being obliged to apply for drivers' and wedding licenses in Ukrainian.

 'Our national language needs support,' Yushchenko said. 'It is the obligation of all Ukrainians to speak it.'

   Yushchenko likewise has been uncompromising in his stance toward the Kremlin. This is in stark contrast to the leanings of most Ukrainians who, according to polls, favour friendly Russia-Ukraine relations.

Public opinion notwithstanding, Yushchenko has pushed for Ukraine to join NATO, and branded as 'illegal' sorties by Russian warships used against Georgia during the 2008 South Ossetia war. He has even ordered traffic police to block movements by Russian military convoys in Ukraine's Crimea peninsula on grounds of traffic violations.

'This is the wrong approach, it helps no one to seek confrontation with Russia,' said the front-runner Yanukovych, in a December speech. 'We need responsible foreign policy ... not demonstrations for show.'

An alliance between Tymoshenko and Yanukovych marginalized Yushchenko by 2007, leaving him in office as a figurehead, but stripped of most executive powers and able to do little since then except to take principled stands against his more flexible opponents, according to the general political consensus.

   'As it turned out, with just principled declarations the head of a government really can't make things any better,' according to the influential magazine Komentarii. 'The person Viktor Yushchenko turned out not just to be wrong for the job of president (of Ukraine), but simply incompatible with it.'