Ukraine's leading English-language newspaper since 1995

The Orange Revolution spirit is alive. Public indignation and pushback made Victor Yanukovych and Yulia Tymoshenko back out of the deal to create a broad coalition.

The spirit of the democratic Orange Revolution is alive. Just as Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and opposition leader Victor Yanukovych appeared to be closing in on an unholy alliance that would undercut democracy for Ukrainians, the co-conspirators ran into a stiff political headwind.

Opposition became widespread and vehement after it transpired that the duo was entertaining the idea of amending the Constitution to eliminate direct, popular election of the president. They also toyed with letting parliament avoid the voters until 2014.

President Victor Yushchenko called for help to stop what he called a constitutional coup. Democrats abroad voiced their reservations. But, decisively, many Ukrainians recoiled, including those in civil society and lawmakers in Yulia Tymoshenko’s own faction and elsewhere. They were indignant at the prospect of an oligarch-controlled parliament electing the nation’s president, a right that Ukrainians overwhelmingly favor. The pushback led first Yanukovych and then Tymoshenko on June 7 to back away as fast as they could.

While they claim they were coming together to combat the economic crisis, they could have done that months ago if that was their aim. Instead, Tymoshenko and Yanukovych looked every bit like a devious power-grabbing pair determined to run the government at all costs. They got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. In floating what turned out to be a lead-weighted trial balloon, they inadvertently revealed how deeply the democratic instinct runs in this nation.

After the lights were flipped on inside the cockroach den, the leaders’ backpedaling looked all the more pathetic and disingenuous.

Yanukovych, whose public record is antithetical to democracy, gave a televised speech on June 7. “Speeding up reform is necessary, but not at the cost of limiting people’s rights,” Yanukovych said, with supporters dutifully standing behind him. This is an odd conversion from a politician who was on the anti-democratic side of the barricades during the 2004 Orange Revolution, when millions of voters took to the streets to stop their presidential election from being rigged in Yanukovych’s favor.

This is probably why Yanukovych bailed out first. He leads in the presidential polls and has a decent chance of being elected president. He may have belatedly come to his senses and realized that any deal eliminating direct presidential elections could end his political career. Tymoshenko went on TV later the same day and spun Yanukovych’s actions this way: “Unfortunately, private ambitions, unwillingness to compete and personal interests have won again.”

Fittingly, both performances showed off their anti-democratic sensibilities. They talked to people on TV, rather than face them and answer difficult questions.

While we hope that Ukraine has seen the last of these shenanigans, we expect many more before the next presidential election in 2010. This is why eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.