Yulia Tymoshenko has been present on Ukraine’s political stage for two decades. She has battled in this male-dominated environment to succeed in reaching positions of high office several times.
Three years ago, as she resumed her life in politics following her release from prison, I wrote “Tymoshenko, Again?” and, three years later, here’s a follow up. This article will focus on reminding people of the unholy alliances Tymoshenko has forged over her decades on the Ukrainian political scene.
As far back as 1999, Tymoshenko was a deputy prime minister, with responsibility for the energy sector, which was a screaming conflict of interest if ever there was one, as she was also at the same time controlling the middleman company earning fees from the lucrative gas trade between Ukraine and Russia.
Tymoshenko then went on to occupy the office of prime minister, twice, in 2005 and again from December 2007 until March 2010.
At present Kyiv (no doubt much of Ukraine) is covered with adverts from Tymoshenko, where she calls for “a new course for Ukraine.” But what “new course” will a person who is already a central figure in Ukraine’s political scene be able offer?
It’s a nice slogan, but, that’s where it ends. Yulia Volodymyrvna has already had plenty of chances to take Ukraine in a new direction. She has spurned them all because her interests are wealth and power, not public service.
My advice to Ukrainian voters is simple, look at who is asking for your trust. Look at their records. If Ukrainians decide, as is their democratic right, to elect Tymoshenko as their president, they should know what kind of person they’re asking to run their country and fix the problems here.
Tymoshenko’s record is not one of delivering change for the hardworking men and women of Ukraine.
This is Tymoshenko’s record:
Lazarenko
One of Tymoshenko’s oldest cohorts is one Pavlo Lazarenko. Lazarenko today is unique in that he is a former Ukrainian official (vice prime minister and prime minister) who has been prosecuted for illicit profiteering from his activities while in office.
It will surprise few people that justice for Lazarenko didn’t come via a Ukrainian court, as Ukraine’s judges are allergic to dealing with cases involving political corruption. Lazarenko’s money laundering (believed to be in the amount of approximately $200 million looted dollars) attracted the attention of U.S. law enforcement because this money passed through the U.S. banking system. He was tried and jailed in the United States.
Tymoshenko maintained a close relationship, personal and business, with Lazarenko while he was prime minister, from 1996 until 1998. At the time, Tymoshenko controlled a company called United Energy Systems, which, not by coincidence but through patronage (the cut to Lazarenko was widely believed to be 50 percent of profits) and underhand murky agreements was the sole intermediary in the Russia-Ukraine gas business. In 1998 the British Virgin Islands issued search warrants relating to Lazarenko, Tymoshenko, and her husband.
This is the type of person Tymoshenko has associated with in the past.
Saakashvili
When Mikheil Saakashvili decided his sojourn in Odesa was over and he wanted to enter the national political scene in Ukraine, he formed an alliance of convenience with Tymoshenko. This topic has been covered by me in detail in previous articles.
The brief affair between Tymoshenko and Saakashvili began publicly when she was on board the train that first attempted to bring the former Georgian president back to Ukraine, and she was alongside him when tent camps full of veterans were established close to Ukraine’s parliament building.
This was a dangerous populist gamble, for both of them – taking genuinely aggrieved veterans and put them in a tinderbox atmosphere. In exactly the same place, through a near identical set of circumstances, four lives of national guardsmen, veterans of the war in the east, were lost.
Tymoshenko and Saakashvili apparently didn’t care.
Yanukovych
In December 2008, Tymoshenko, needing a strong parliamentary base to ensure her personal ambitions of high office were met, flirted with the idea of forming a coalition with the Party of Regions. This party was of course then headed by Victor Yanukovych, her political foe in the Orange Revolution that led blocked a falsified presidential election and led to Viktor Yushchenko’s victory over Yanukovych in a re-vote on Dec. 26. 2004.
This first attempt to work with Yanukovych failed, but the fact that she even considered such a partnership with that man should really be enough to condemn to the scrapheap her current political ambition to become president
Yanukovych, again!
Yanukovych finally fled Ukraine, after 93 days of revolution against him, on Feb. 22, 2014. In the grounds of his palatial estate investigative reporters got to work that same day trying to salvage and archive documents. These documents were a Pandora’s Box of previously secret materials relating to corruption, obscene spending, and a partnership agreement between Tymoshenko and Yanukovych.
In the heady days following the revolution, this story failed to get much traction: Tymoshenko had just been released from her politically motivated jailing after more than two years, and people were happy to see her free. But a story by reporter (and now parliamentarian) Sergii Leshchenko laid out some shocking details of what had been planned by Tymoshenko, in association with Yanukovych.
The two had plotted to usurp democracy in Ukraine.
The deal negotiated between Tymoshenko and Yanukovych was simple: they decided between them to occupy on a rotating basis the offices of prime minister and president for twenty years, until 2029.
The people would have no choice in this.
The arrangement is similar to the one struck between Russian President Vladimir Putin and one of his allies, Dmitry Medvedev. In 2008, Putin relinquished the presidency to Medvedev, as according to the Russian constitution Putin could serve no more than two consecutive terms as head of state. During Medvedev’s one term as president, Putin occupied the post of prime minister, which Medvedev had vacated. Then, when Medvedev’s term was up in 2012, the two swapped roles again.
This is precisely the kind of deal Tymoshenko plotted with Yanukovych.
As Tymoshenko again prepares to run for president, the question of whether she really has anything new to offer the country must be raised. The Ukrainian electorate will have to answer that question.
But if her past is anything to go by, she does not.
