Oleh Rybachuk sat down with the Kyiv Post to discuss the presidential elections, the candidates and the country’s future.
Oleh Rybachuk is a former chief of staff to President Victor Yushchenko and served in Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s first government as deputy prime minister for European integration. He sat down with the Kyiv Post to discuss the presidential elections, the candidates and the country’s future.
KP: How much will the country’s direction change under a new president? How will the path differ under Yulia Tymoshenko or Victor Yanukovych?
OR: I think it’s not so much about direction, but speed – how quickly the country can move. Both Tymoshenko and Yanukovych will tell you that the decision is made: Ukraine is European, part of the European Union. In real terms, it’s that direction. So we have a train and, on the leading locomotive, we have Europe. But the speed and the way you go are clearly not fast. I don’t believe that some newly elected Ukrainian leadership would come with the slogan ‘Back to the U.S.S.R.’ or relationship with Belarus and Russia.
KP: What about Russia?
OR: Russia understands that Ukraine is lost. But, meanwhile, 10 years or 20 years are a lot in political life for businessmen. Time matters. Therefore, the Kremlin tries to delay that process. Russians said: ‘You decide where to go, but if you go to the West, there is a price to pay. You have to pay market prices for gas.’ So we are paying this. This is a kind of a game. It’s all about delaying it for the foreseeable future. Whatever could delay the process is welcomed in Moscow. They have nothing to propose. They cannot seduce, they can only blackmail. They haven’t offered any model of relationship. Belarus was the model, and look what happened there. Everybody tries to play everyone else. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is trying to drive Yushchenko crazy by getting friendly with Tymoshenko. It’s animal hate because Yushchenko symbolizes not only deep humiliation, but the largest threat to the Kremlin. A successful Ukraine is good for democratic Russia, but a disaster for the Putin-Medvedev tandem. Therefore it’s not just personal hatred, but institutional hatred.
KP: What else is slowing down the process?
OR: Do politicians want Europe? Probably not, because it means that you have to act according to the law, to be transparent, to be accountable, and whoever gets to the top of the political Olympus here is clearly not playing by European rules. Some big businessmen like Rinat Akhmetov, who sells to the West and hires Western managers, might be interested, but this is not an issue of life or death. They can perfectly manage with corrupt politicians, which is why they have their own parties and try to finance their own candidates. Most interested are small and medium business, as they cannot breathe. But they don’t have any power to change it. At this point, there is no locomotive. Therefore it doesn’t work.
KP: If there’s no locomotive, what’s going to push through reforms?
OR: Soviet infrastructure is practically rotting away. The Soviet legacy has expired. In the next few years not only the hot water pipes, but bridges, railways, electricity, power stations and so on, will have to be replaced. Any relationship or love games with Russia get nothing: no technology, no more cheap gas. There is no choice. The whole potential of the Soviet economy has been used, and there is no model for post-Soviet development, just decay. The only competitive model comes from Europe. Therefore, whoever gets there will have to look at a better functioning system. The Russian system frightens our businessmen. [Jailed Russian oligarch Mikhail] Khodorkovsky’s life is not inspiring.
KP: Turning to the elections, can Tymoshenko close the gap on Yanukovych?
OR: People are hypnotized by Yanukovych’s high rating. I don’t believe the big gap of 15 percent. Most probably there will be a fierce battle. If Tymoshenko is in the second round with Yanukovych, I would agree with Yushchenko, who said that whoever is against Yanukovych will win, because the number of people who believe in something opposite to Yanukovych’s values in Ukraine is much bigger. Yanukovych has a maximum of up to 30 percent. All the rest of Ukrainians believe in different things.
KP: How do you see politics shaping up after the elections?
OR: If Tymoshenko wins, Yanukovych will disappear as a politician, as it would be his third disaster. Although they say he ‘won’ the 2007 parliamentary elections, getting the largest percentage of votes means nothing when you can’t transform it into a coalition and into a political job.
If Yanukovych loses, there will be no Party of Regions in the sense that it is now. There would be the party of Rinat Akhmetov and perhaps two other groups. Some people would join Tymoshenko. Others might join a politician like Sergiy Tigipko for example.
She’s very good at gaining support in parliament. After the Orange Revolution she had around 30 members of her faction. Immediately after she became prime minister she doubled or tripled her faction.
If Tymoshenko loses, there would be a split of her faction, but she wouldn’t disappear. She might defend the position of prime minister. One active student leader told me that it’s better if Tymoshenko wins, because Yushchenko and Yanukovych will disappear, and Tymoshenko will disappear after the next elections. But if Yanukovych wins, Tymoshenko will not disappear. It’s the shortest way to get rid of all three of them.
KP: Is the talk from Tymoshenko and other candidates of a ‘strong leader’ worrying?
OR: She’s a one-woman show. She says: ‘I have learnt from past experience, I know what to do, I will not repeat mistakes therefore I will construct for you a young, beautiful and strong democracy. I wouldn’t rely on anybody else. I would do it personally.’ But who decides what healthy ‘young and beautiful democracy’ means?
Last summer, Tymoshenko and Yanukovych offered Ukrainians the Russian scheme, where a strong prime minister proposes a weak politician as president. Moreover, they said 10 years of stability, no elections, everything is under control. Eighty-six percent of Ukrainians said no way – we want to elect our president. Russians are happy with what they have with this stability; when it was offered to Ukrainians, they said no. In Ukraine you have to compete. You can’t just make a deal, like Putin-Medvedev or Yeltsin-Putin. It doesn’t work.
When you talk with Ukrainians, they like the idea of a strong hand when you talk about governing, about rule of law. But if you try to take away their freedoms –for example, to elect their president –you’ll get what you got in the summer. When people say they want a strong hand, they say they want law and order, instead of chaos. It’s not taking away freedoms.
Kyiv Post staff writer James Marson can be reached at [email protected].
