The second option was urged on the president this week by ex-deputy prime minister Mykola Tomenko. It’s the one we favor, too. “It’s degrading to be the locomotive... pulling in the party list on your own name,” Tomenko said in a press conference. We wouldn’t go so far as to call it degrading, but we do think it will be bad for the country. If Yushchenko gets involved in the campaign, the presidency will become almost completely a political weapon. That wouldn’t be unprecedented, but it would be a shame, because there’s a lot of work for Yushchenko to do.
That work includes building a coalition in the parliament to pass the legislation necessary to getting Ukraine into the World Trade Organization. It also includes tax and administrative reform. All of this is more important than aggrandizing Our Ukraine, especially since there’s a sense in the country that that party has been taken over by none-too-clean moneyed interests, and that Yushchenko would just be helping his own crew of tainted tycoons into Rada seats. The suspicion that Our Ukraine has gone bad was apparently what motivated two members of the party to quit it this week. More members are expected to bail out.
If Yushchenko is going to start getting things done, he’s going to need to work in an environment that’s less poisoned by power politics, rather than more. If the cliche can be allowed, he needs to do the “statesman-like” thing and rise above the kaleidoscopic mess of shifting power relations that characterizes politics in this country. He has to foment stability and build bridges, including to Viktor Yanukovych’s Regions of Ukraine party, which could be a good source of votes on certain important issues. (We’re not overjoyed by the idea of Yushchenko making common cause with Yanukovych, but that’s the political situation right now, and one that Yushchenko is largely responsible for creating.) Yes, he’ll likely lose some power in parliament to the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, but he’ll gain in total political power more than he loses in Rada seats. Leader that he’s supposed to be, he’ll have cleansed some of the acrid stench of vicious power-politicking from the halls of parliament, and will be able to work on unifying the legislature.
What’s more important, Ukraine or the sinking ship that is Our Ukraine? Needless to say, Ukraine, hands down.
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