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Despite moving the nation closer to democracy, voters are focused on Yushchenko's unkept promises.

Victor Yushchenko

Age: 55

Hometown: Khorzhivka, Sumy Oblast

Education: Ternopil Finance and Economics Institute (1975)

Career: Economist, banker, politician

Political Posts: National Bank of Ukraine chairman (1973-1999), Our Ukraine bloc leader, prime minister (1999-00), president (2005-present)

Campaign slogan: “We have achieved this!”

Family status: Married, five children, three gradnchildren

Famous quote: “I have values I will die with. Regardless of whether the nation understands me or not, I will keep telling about generations of Ukrainians tortured and mutilated. This is the mission of the president. If I have to take the second doze of dioxin, I will do it, I won’t turn it down. I have five children. I want to be able to say to them: I passed Ukraine on to you better than I had received it.”

Incumbent President Victor Yushchenko is billing himself as the only “true pro-Ukrainian president” while labeling presidential front-runners Yulia Tymoshenko and Victor Yanukovych as “Kremlin projects.”

While many in the West still have the indelible image of him as the champion of the 2004 democratic Orange Revolution, people at home see him more and more as part of the same corrupt authoritarian set of leaders that he rallied crowds against more than five years ago. His term has been marked by a focus on Ukraine’s national identity, language and history. All would have been noble causes had he tackled bread-and-butter issues, made headway against lawlessness and corruption and improved the economic lot of most Ukrainians. He was unable to do so.

In what many think will be his political swan song, Yushchenko’s diehard supporters say the heights of his presidency overshadow its lows.

“Yushchenko can afford a low rating because he’s ideologically strong,” said Vadym Karasiov, Yushchenko’s political adviser. “He stands and cares for Ukraine’s history, the Holodomor, culture, language, but Yanukovych is ideologically weak. He will have to keep a high rating if he assumes office.”

Yushchenko has insisted he cares about values, not ratings. “Everyone I ask about whether they want to live in ‘2004’ Ukraine always tells me no,” Yushchenko said at a national news conference on Jan. 12.

Excluding the three Baltic countries, Ukraine today is the most democratic of any post-Soviet country due in large part to Yushchenko’s position on many issues such as free speech, media freedoms, and free and fair elections. These achievements are highlighted in his campaign, but have done nothing to move his popularity beyond single digits.

His economic policies shepherded Ukraine’s entry into the World Trade Organization. Journalists are much freer to criticize. Civil liberties are so embedded that they are taken for granted already.

But the Yushchenko administration never solving high-profile crimes (including his own life-threatening poisoning), put corrupt government officials in prison, anchored the nation to the rule of law or brought ringleaders of the 2004 presidential election fraud to justice.

He also handed out presidential awards to officials from his ex-President Leonid Kuchma’s corrupt regime, something he regrets today. He even gave one to Serhiy Kivalov, the former Central Election Commission head who played a key role in the 2004 rigged election. “That wasn’t the best decision I have made,” Yushchenko admitted on Jan. 12, referring to the medals he gave out.

Yushchenko’s incessant pro-NATO and pro-European Union rhetoric incurred the ire of Russia, without bringing the nation closer to those two institutions. Aside from failing to rein in corruption, he failed to reduce bureaucracy and ease tax regulations.

“We cannot have European integration without reform at home,” Yushchenko said on Jan. 12. But he blamed Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s government for the shortcomings and the president, if re-elected, promised to combat corruption anew.

“Many people also want this [accomplished],” Oleh Rybachuk, his former chief of staff, told Korrespondent magazine on Dec. 25. “But many are also asking why it took five years for you to come up with these ideas.”

Yushchenko grew up in a family of village teachers in Sumy Oblast. By many accounts, he had a typical Soviet upbringing. He studied accounting in the western Ukrainian city of Ternopil, where he said he became “more Ukrainian.” He then served in the army after which he went to work for the Ulianskiy branch of the Soviet Union state bank until 1985.

He made his way to Kyiv in 1986, joining up with his mentor Vadym Hetman, at the giant U.S.S.R. Agroprombank. He later followed Hetman to the National Bank of Ukraine. Hetman was assassinated in 1998, a crime still unsolved today. Yushchenko eventually became central bank chairman, a post he held from 1993 through 1999. As its head, Yushchenko curbed hyperinflation to 15.9 percent in 1997 and introduced a new national currency, the hryvnia, in 1996 with no panic or inflation.

He mostly stayed out of politics during this period.

Ex-President Leonid Kuchma tapped him to be his prime minister after winning re-election in 1999. Yushchenko’s government was credited with stabilizing the economy. The Yushchenko government’s prudent fiscal policy contributed to ending the economic decline and paving the way for last decade’s economic growth.

He also eliminated wage and pension arrears and balanced the budget. He oversaw the elimination of collective farming. Farmers were allowed to own their own land and investment conditions improved. Another accomplishment back then – spearheaded by his then-deputy Tymoshenko – was the elimination of corrupt barter schemes in the country’s energy sector.

On April 26, 2001, the government didn’t survive a no-confidence vote in parliament, apparently because he was become too independent and a political threat to the insecure Kuchma. In a speech shortly after his sacking, Yushchenko said: “As a citizen, I am convinced that democracy in Ukraine has suffered a serious loss … I am not going to leave politics. I am leaving, in order to return.”

Yushchenko entered parliament from 2002 to 2004, when he led Ukraine’s opposition against the authoritarian Kuchma regime that attempted to steal the 2004 presidential vote. During the campaign, he survived an attempted dioxin poising that left his face swelled with lesions and pockmarks.

Mass protests and civil unrest ensued creating a peaceful Orange Revolution. Thereafter, Ukraine’s Supreme Court ordered a third round of voting, which Yushchenko won against Yanukovych, 52 percent vs. 44 percent, respectively.

As president, Yushchenko couldn’t display the masterful management skills he demonstrated at the central bank and as prime minister. He ended up bickering with allies and ousted Tymoshenko’s government only nine months after his inauguration. To aggravate matters, his powers were muddled by constitutional changes in 2006 that he agreed to as a way to end the Orange Revolution in compromise with his adversaries.

Kyiv Post staff writer Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected].