Disappointed nation grew tired of its president cutting ribbons to open folk museums, while corruption flourished and economy crumbled.
Just days before his re-election hopes evaporated on Jan. 17, Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko called for the formation of an international tribunal to investigate communist-era crimes. He announced his intention in his usual dignified way, a far cry from his two predecessors – Leonid Kuchma and Leonid Kravchuk. By contrast, the talked in Soviet-speak and seldom dared to broach the painful topic of crimes committed during the 70-year existence of the Soviet Union.
Yushchenko also stopped engaging with the electorate. He held no last-minute campaign rallies. He had no candid give-and-take with voters online or on television. It was as if he were trying to become oblivious to his inevitable political demise.
“I’ve known Yushchenko for 15 of the last 18 years. I always liked his raw ‘Ukrainianess’ — how he embodied all things Ukrainian,” said Oleskandr Paskhaver, director of the Economic Development Center and former adviser to the president. “But he should’ve gone about it more subtly and not so headstrong.”
Voters clearly decided, for many reasons, that he is no longer fit to lead the nation.
The nation had grown tired of seeing Yushchenko cut ribbons at the opening of art museums, visiting ethno-markets and erecting monuments wondering why he hadn’t put the “bandits” to prison instead, as he promised to do on the back of strong public support in 2004.
Referring to himself as the only “pro-Ukrainian” candidate, Yushchenko finished in a humiliating fifth place out of 18 candidates, taking only 5.5 percent of the vote. He acknowledged the victors – Victor Yanukovych and Yulia Tymoshenko — in a brief post-election statement on Jan. 20. But he went on to say that he prefers neither to lead the nation. He has described both of them as “pro-Kremlin projects” who are “essentially foreign, don’t understand and very distant” from European, democratic and national values.
On his way to political irrelevance, Yushchenko finished in second place in his last remaining strongholds of support – Lviv, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk oblasts.
Yet Yushchenko said he will not leave politics, an occupation he publicly stated he hates. Instead of becoming a private citizen and devoting time to his hobbies of beekeeping and collecting Ukrainian art and antiquities, he said he feels that “…national and state obligations don’t give me the moral right to leave the political life of Ukraine”.
Nevertheless, Yushchenko’s five years as president have left their mark. Experts think that his heart was in the right place, but not his mind.
“His main legacy is that his style of limited rule will continue, space for media freedoms will persist, institutional pluralism will endure and political diversity will survive,” said Adrian Karatnycky, senior fellow of the Atlantic Council of the United States. “All these
The downside, Karatnycky said, is “excessive pluralism in the absence of political consensus in society has led to stasis, deadlock, and the absence of true reform.” Or, as Oleksiy Haran, a political scientist at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy said: “These gains weren’t institutionalized.”
While Yushchenko is credited for ushering in an era of civil liberties and fair elections that many now take for granted, experts agreed he couldn’t deliver in other areas, such as the fight against crime and corruption among the entrenched elite. Perhaps more importantly, millions of Ukrainians saw no great improvement in living standards that, for millions of people, remain poor.
Despite his public support for NATO and European Union membership, Yushchenko’s tenure arguably brought the nation farther from both goals – and alienated the nation’s most important and powerful neighbor, Russia, in the process.
At the end, fewer people supported NATO than under former President Leonid Kuchma, corruption arguably worsened and trust in government institutions deteriorated further. And, little by little, his allies during the 2004 Orange Revolution turned away from him and he was left with few people he could count on. Voters decided his ineffectiveness was mainly his fault.
Even Yushchenko’s efforts at promoting the Ukrainian language, culture and history were not completely successful and perhaps detrimental in some ways. Andriy Okara, a Moscow-based political analyst, said: “He supported a minimalist (Ukrainian) identity, much like how post-World War II Jews were raised: That of having a (psychological) complex of being a perpetual victim. This is terrible actually to teach to children in schools.”
Zakhar Vynogradov of RIA Novosti also recognized Yushchenko’s mixed record.
“He did a lot, he was responsible for the re-birth of the Ukrainian language, of Ukraine’s national consciousness,” Vynogradov said. “He erected monuments to the Holodomor, but he couldn’t complete his plans and this was a huge mistake. The people didn’t accept this because he didn’t see it through to its logical end.”
Yushchenko said one of his parting gifts to the nation, as the guarantor of the Constitution, will be to ensure that the Feb. 7 final round of the election takes place “freely, lawfully and democratically.” He challenged Tymoshenko and Yanukovych to do the same, with “dignity.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected]. factors have deepened Ukraine’s democracy.”
