Ukraine's leading English-language newspaper since 1995

Parliament should affirm Yekhanurov already, and Ukraine's politicians should control themselves

Sept. 20 failure – by a mere five votes – to confirm Yuriy Yekhanurov, the popular Dnipropetrovsk governor who’s a long-time ally of President Viktor Yushchenko, as prime minister. Thus did the legislature fail to put an end to the all-enveloping circus that’s distracting the ruling class of this still-backwards country from doing the important things it needs to do. The backstabbing, the jockeying, the maneuvering, the politicking – for the foreseeable future, it’s all going to continue, and just become more intense.

The failed vote is a testament to the divisions and rivalries that define Ukrainian political culture at the moment – divisions that are all the more bitter for being based in personal animus between some of Ukraine’s most powerful people. This country’s progress threatens to be stopped for the better part of the next year – at least through the parliamentary elections next March 31 and the subsequent formation of a government – by what might arguably be a spat for pure power. That’s what the endless name-calling between Yushchenko, Tymoshenko, Petro Poroshenko and the rest of them looks like.

Ukraine’s development shouldn’t be sabotaged by internecine political warfare. Without a prime minister to take charge, form a government and normalize the situation, nothing will get done in Ukraine for a long time. There will be no judicial reforms, no administrative reforms, none of the economic changes needed to bring Ukraine closer to the West. The WTO; increased foreign investment; the disaster that is this country’s justice system; the massive bureaucratic corruption; the reprivatization issue; energy policy; all the unsolved political deaths that haunt Ukrainian society – none of these things will get the attention they deserve for the better part of the next year. Leaders will be spending 100 percent of their energy trying to do each other dirt.

The failure of Yekhanurov’s candidacy is the more irritating because he’s not a bad man for the job right now. He’s bland, professional, widely liked, not especially political, reputedly uncorrupt, unlikely to rock the boat, and without political ambitions or grandstanding instincts of his own. His mere presence in office will calm the waters and signal to Ukrainian society and the rest of the world that Ukraine is a normal place. We read that Yushchenko is thinking of forwarding his candidacy again – and hope that he does – and that this time Yekhanurov is accepted. We also hope that Tymoshenko cools her ambitions for long enough to help him through, but we’re not counting on it. In her Sept. 21 press conference, she again offered to work with Yushchenko for the good of the country, but anything she does right now has to be considered a strategic move. They’re all playing a game.

And one more word for Tymoshenko, and indeed for Yushchenko: talk of rigging the political reform process one way or the other should not be heard again. On Sept. 19 it emerged that the Tymoshenko Bloc might try to move up constitutional reforms from their scheduled date on Jan. 1. The move would give Tymoshenko a shot at becoming a vastly more powerful prime minister immediately, and not (as might happen) next spring. For his part, Yushchenko flirted last week with the idea of trying to delay reform, and thus keep more power in his own hands.

They both need to shut up. The rules as drafted say that reform goes into effect on Jan. 1. Period. In a democratic system, you follow the rules. You don’t get to change them when they no longer work for you. As the cliche goes, a democracy is a system of rules, not of men (or women).

We don’t want to sound preachy. Any journalist worth his name should be overjoyed by the sort of political spectacle unfolding in Ukraine now. But there can’t only be spectacle – gamesmanship and brawling – at the expense of all the real political work this country, more than most, needs.

And while we're at it, President Yushchenko needs to change his behavior a little bit. Even if he's far from being Ukraine's Richard Nixon, as we've heard fancifully suggested, he has a tendency to act a little bit too much like that troubled former U.S president: paranoid, defensive, given to seeing evil plots where they don't exist. In his speech to parliament before the vote on Yekhanurov, he couched his appeal to legislators in the language of the conspiracy theorist, claiming that “some of those who stood on Independence Square and some of those who wanted Independence Square not to happen” are conniving to destabilize the government. He also warned legislators away from “intrigues.” We understand that Yushchenko is under a lot of pressure, but this is just batty. It's not the first time such creepy language has come out of his mouth, either.

Yushchenko has to cut it out. European heads of states are expected not to talk like paranoid, unshaven backwoods demagogues, mumbling accusations as they lash out at their real or imagined enemies.