To Pliushch Et Al: Toe The Line Or Step Aside For Someone Who Will

KIEV, Ukraine -- Politics in Ukraine’s fledgling republic has a reputation of being a dirty business. While political assassinations and massive vote rigging belong more and more to the past than the present, the country’s status as a democracy remains tenuous at best.

Ivan Pliushch (L) and Yuriy Yekhanurov
In Ukraine, those holding public office often cause the greatest harm to the country and its democratic institutions, particularly parliament, by disregarding the spirit in which these institutions were created and putting individual interests ahead of the nation.

As the great British statesman Benjamin Disraeli once put it, it is these institutions – not merely individuals – that collectively define and create a nation. Sadly, the erosion of these institutions only increases when ignorance and naivety are introduced into the mix, especially by the president of the republic.

It’s been more than a month since the Sept. 30 early parliamentary elections, and several months since President Viktor Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine party and a cluster of other pro-presidential parties signed an agreement with Yulia Tymoshenko’s eponymous bloc (Byut) to form a government following a positive election outcome. The elections went in their collective favor and, as had been long understood, members of the Our Ukraine bloc and those of Byut negotiated and reached an agreement on forming the government – a government that would be exclusive of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and his Russian-leaning Party of Regions. Today, the agreement remains in limbo and in jeopardy of falling apart.

Three figures in the Our Ukraine bloc have openly defied the president and refused to sign the coalition agreement. Instead of finalizing it, they are being openly critical of it. Among them is Ivan Pliushch, the former head of Ukraine’s powerful National Security and Defense Council and a long-time ally of former President Leonid Kuchma, who himself has unsurprisingly called for the Regions to be included in the new government.

Former prime minister and Our Ukraine deputy-elect Yuriy Yekhanurov has also joined the fray, saying he will not serve under Tymoshenko.

The present deal has been long in coming, however, making it farcical that powerful men such as these could come out and say they did not know or agree on the details of the pact beforehand or failed to understand its implications – that it entailed a Tymoshenko-led government.

In what is already a razor-thin governing coalition, this kind of a rebellion at such an early stage could be extremely damaging for the parliamentary process in Ukraine. While voting one’s conscience is a hallmark of democracy, so is backing up election promises. This rebellion puts people ahead of politics and completely flies in the face of the Our Ukraine campaign slogan of “One law for all.”

Crucially here, President Yushchenko has so far neither admonished these men publicly, nor called for them to sign on. To make matters worse, he has not given public support to the coalition and has even reiterated remarks he made immediately following the vote regarding the need for as broad a governing coalition as possible – meaning one that includes the Regions. The new parliament could be doomed before it is even sworn in, though it needn’t be. All Ukraine needs is for Yushchenko to enforce a simple but important lesson in parliamentary democracy: Toe the line, or step aside for someone who will.

The time for disagreements over the coalition deal is over; 225 of 228 deputies are already onboard; Pliushch, et al, are stonewalling democracy. Governments with the narrowest of majorities, such as OU-Byut, require the strictest of party discipline to survive in the face of determined opposition. Given the overwhelming support that Byut received in the September poll, Pliushch has little right to speak out against the present agreement. Without Byut, he and Our Ukraine would be a sorry stepsister in a Regions-led governing coalition, and not on the equal footing they are close to enjoying today.

Yushchenko needs to make that abundantly clear to everyone involved in this issue.

Despite the president’s bungling of his first year in power and his handling of everything, from his alleged poisoning to the ongoing murder investigation of journalist Heorhiy Gongadze, it’s hard to imagine that he is so ignorant and naive as to forget recent lessons from history.

Will Yushchenko really allow this hard-won but fragile coalition to be undermined, and throw away yet another chance to build on Ukraine’s democratic foundations by letting party backbenchers shoot their mouths off in the press? He’s running out of time to show his current and future allies, or more importantly, Ukrainian voters, that he supports parliamentary democracy, the Our Ukraine-Byut coalition, and will bring party backbenchers to heel to support both.

I applauded President Yushchenko when he spoke after the election about the need for as broad a governing coalition as possible, but now it’s time for him to silence the critics and use his power to close this deal. Is the pre-election coalition agreement not what he agreed to or saw as a possible outcome before the election? Then he should resign, or voters will show him the door anyway. If the president needs any examples as to what happens to “Orange” parties that negotiate in bad faith, he should consider the fate of his one-time allies, Oleksandr Moroz and the Socialist Party.

For the sake of the country and for parliamentary democracy in Ukraine, President Yushchenko needs to make an example of Pliushch, the other two holdouts, and any other loose cannons in Our Ukraine, by sacking them. The good of the country and all Ukrainians depends on it.

Source: Kyiv Post