[aaus-list] Eurasia Daily Monitor -- Volume 6, Issue 28 [Ukrainian content]

[Jamestown Foundation]

[Reproduced in portion, with permission of the Jamestown Foundation--RDL]


  February 11, 2009-Volume 6, Issue 28

IN THIS ISSUE:
*Moscow steps up arms sales to Sudan appoints Mikhail Margilov as 
special envoy to Khartoum
*Tymoshenko survives no-confidence vote as rivals sink into crisis
*Baku displays concern over creation of CSTO rapid reaction force
*Upcoming election to determine the future of Turkish politics


[...]

Tymoshenko Defeats Yanukovych in Parliament

Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko survived a no-confidence 
motion in parliament on February 5. The motion was backed by 203 
votes, 23 short of the number required in the 450-seat chamber to 
oust the government. This was another victory of this kind for 
Tymoshenko, who survived a similar motion last December. Tymoshenko 
will stay at least until September, as parliament can vote on 
no-confidence motions only once in a session.

Tymoshenko's victory was a crashing defeat for the Party of Regions 
(PRU), the main opposition party of former Prime Minister Viktor 
Yanukovych, which organized this motion, but lost the game because of 
internal differences and the lack of trust among potential allies. If 
Yanukovych fails to consolidate the PRU, it will be very difficult 
for him to win the next presidential poll, and the party itself may 
lose its leading positions. 

Like in December, the PRU was abandoned by its would-be allies at the 
crucial moment. Although the majority of the Communists backed the 
motion, several of them, including leader Petro Symonenko, were 
simply absent from parliament. Although President Viktor Yushchenko's 
aide Roman Bezsmertny called for Tymoshenko's dismissal ahead of the 
vote (ICTV, February 3), Yushchenko himself failed to take a clear 
stance, so only one splinter group from the pro-Yushchenko Our 
Ukraine - People's Self-Defense (NUNS) caucus - the United Center 
linked to presidential secretariat head Viktor Baloha - supported the 
motion. Another pro-Yushchenko group, headed by Vyacheslav Kyrylenko, 
apparently abstained, afraid to lose its ministers in the Tymoshenko 
government (Zerkalo Nedeli, February 7).

The reluctance of the other potential allies of the PRU to back it 
against Tymoshenko, whose government is very weak due to both the 
economic crisis and the incessant conflicts with Yushchenko, is due 
to the PRU's own weakness. The PRU has earned a reputation for being 
an unreliable partner in coalition talks because several groups of 
influence within it have been tearing the party in different 
directions. When the chair under Tymoshenko was shaky last fall, the 
PRU negotiated a possible coalition simultaneously with her party and 
her bitter rival Yushchenko. As a result, a new coalition was formed, 
but without the PRU.

The problem for the PRU is that it is essentially a business 
corporation driven by the economic interests of its major sponsors 
like the metals tycoon Rinat Akhmetov and the gas tycoon Dmytro 
Firtash, which do not always coincide. In the conditions of the 
Ukrainian political war of all against all, it is hard for the PRU to 
compete when everything is at stake with such political machines as 
the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (BYT), where everything depends on the iron 
will of the leader, and the ideological parties of Yushchenko and 
Symonenko.

The PRU lost the most recent battle against Tymoshenko even before it 
started. A day before the vote, the PRU gathered to decide what to do 
if the no-confidence motion failed and how to persuade several of its 
least disciplined members to turn up for the vote, rather than how to 
proceed after Tymoshenko's possible ousting. Moreover, a conflict 
erupted between the three strongest groups of influence within the 
PRU linked to Firtash, Akhmetov, and Andry Klyuyev, a businessman 
from Donetsk who is believed to be the main supporter of the idea of 
a PRU-Tymoshenko coalition.

Firtash's people reportedly accused Klyuyev of secretly supporting 
Tymoshenko. Klyuyev accused the pro-Firtash group of weakening 
discipline in the party (Ukrainska Pravda, February 6). Borys 
Kolesnikov, who is Akhetov's right-hand man, reportedly alleged that 
Serhy Lyovochkin, the PRU deputy chairman and a man of Firtash, used 
his connections in Yushchenko's secretariat to instigate the opening 
of criminal cases against his party colleagues (Obkom.net.ua, 
February 6).

After the vote, Kolesnykov called for the expulsion from the PRU of 
"certain colleagues whose corporate interests dominate over party 
interests". He said Lyovochkin and his allies played into 
Tymoshenko's hands by pushing for a no-confidence motion without 
properly preparing it (Ukrainska Pravda, February 6). The Firtash 
group pushed for the motion because Tymoshenko's tenure as prime 
minister threatens his gas business. She managed to oust Firtash's 
UkrGaz-Energo from the domestic gas trade in early 2008, and 
RosUkrEnergo, a joint venture between Firtash and Russia's Gazprom, 
has been removed from gas trade between Ukraine and Russia in 2009. 
Now she reportedly plans to put an end to Firtash's control of 
Ukraine's several regional gas distribution companies (Ukraina TV, 
January 23; Kommersant-Ukraine, February 5).

A possible expulsion of Firtash's people from the PRU should give a 
chance for Yanukovych to consolidate the PRU around its Donetsk core. 
The PRU's internal differences have not yet affected either its own 
or its leader's popularity. According to recent opinion polls, the 
PRU remains the most popular party and Yanukovych the most popular 
leader (Segodnya, February 10). Addressing parliament on February 5, 
Yanukovych, who understands that his popularity may evaporate after a 
series of political defeats by the time of the presidential election 
scheduled for January 2010, called for simultaneous early 
presidential and parliamentary elections (Ukrainska Pravda, February 
5). The United Center is apparently the only major party that 
supports the PRU in this area. Quite naturally, Tymoshenko flatly 
dismissed the idea (Kommersant-Ukraine, February 6).

-Pavel Korduban

[...]


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