| END OF POLITICAL CRISIS IN UKRAINE 
VADIM KARASYOV,
Director of the Institute of Global Strategies, Kyiv The negotiations on the date of the early parliamentary elections in Ukraine in which President Viktor Yushchenko, Prime-Minister Viktor Yanukovych as well as Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Oleksandr Moroz and leader of BYuT Yuliya Tymoshenko participated were concluded with a compromise settlement to conduct the elections on September 30. Evidently, there were no other options of the elections date.
Both Viktor Yushchenko and Yuliya Tymoshenko would like the elections to take place in summer. The coalition forces represented by Viktor Yanukovych and Oleksandr Moroz would prefer the elections not to be held at all. But since this is impossible, they regard the end of October or November as ideal time for the elections.
Scheduling the elections for the autumn was of importance to the coalition because the idea of early elections would be lost, Our Ukraine and Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc would become weaker by the late autumn. At the same time, the coalition forces could take its time to get ready for the elections, form the election lists, and also they could set a precedent for holding the early elections not only on the President’s initiative.
On the whole, all the parties are satisfied with September 30. It will be autumn, but the weather will be summer-like. Neither Yushchenko nor Tymoshenko mind this date. At the same time, the elections will take place in autumn, as Yanukovych has required.
In September the election campaign will be in full swing. August is vacation season. If the campaign is conducted in this month, it will take place in vacation resorts.
But still there are winners and losers in this situation. The coalition has reduced the score. The gap between the two opposing parties was bridged. Although, in general President Yushchenko is the winner. His initiative to hold early elections was accepted.
Speaker Oleksandr Moroz is a partial winner.Some of his counter-offers were taken into consideration. For all that, the Socialist Party of Ukraine led by Moroz, is unlikely to get into the Verkhovna Rada. For the time being, its rating is less than 3 percent.
Tymoshenko gets the longed-for early elections. True, herBloc may be unsatisfied with holding the elections in the autumn. BYuT made an early start and might exhaust its potential before October. As a matter of fact, the campaign, all in all, will last half a year, from April to the end of September. So, those who made an early start may waste their forces.
As to the election returns, no sensations are expected. The Party of Regions will be in the lead. BYuTwill rank second, Our Ukraine – third. The People’s Self-Defense Party, whose leader is former Minister of the Interior Yury Lutsenko, has chances to get into the Ukrainian Parliament. This party becomes more and more popular. The Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) can get into the Verkhovna Rada, too. But the Socialist Party of Ukraine may lose the elections.
The People’s Self-Defense Party can replace the Socialist Party in new Verkhovna Rada. This is the most intriguing question in the run-up to the elections that may be resolved by the creation of other coalition combinations that would justify Yushchenko’s initiative.
The point is that the Party of Regions and the CPU may not get 226 votes in the new Parliament. This way, the sense of the early elections – to abolish the pro-Russian East European political bloc – proves its value.
More than that, if the Party of Regions unites with the CPU, it will be clear that the bloc is left and pro-Russian. This is bad for the sponsors and real leaders of the Party of Regions who focus on the Western capital market. Apart from that, if the Party of Regions and the CPU do not get 226 votes and they join the bloc, they will be in opposition.
The coalition may be formed by Our Ukraine, BYuTand the People’s Self-Defense Party. Altogether they can form the parliamentary majority. In Ukraine there will be the pro-Western political bloc bearing the political regime.
The Party of Regions can participate in the bloc with Our Ukraine and BYuT. But the bloc will remain pro-Western.
This is the biggest question mark hovering over the early elections. In spite of the view point that the outcomes of the elections won’t change anything, some political figures may come to big-time politics, others may be relegated to the political backwater. This may lay geopolitical and economic foundations for a new political regime.
May 29, 2007
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