The shocking news last Friday was another presidential veto and parliament’s repeated success in overriding it. The main consideration here is not even the possibility that the law on the Cabinet of Ministers, which largely finalizes the distribution of executive power, will be enacted. Far more important are the signs of a new political situation in which the ruling coalition may have secured systematic rather than situational support from the second-largest faction in parliament — the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc. Under this distribution of power, if the coalition makes the necessary concessions to the chief opposition force, it will acquire almost full control.
The second shocking news for the country is the shattering of hopes for cooperation between the coalition, the government, and the president. The microscopic warming of relations after the famous recent meeting at the highest level could have been discussed at length, but it turned out to be a flash in the pan and has led to further escalation of tensions with consequences that are difficult to foresee right now. From today’s standpoint, even this warming can be viewed as having been prompted by the panic that seized the Presidential Secretariat after parliament overrode the presidential veto on the moratorium on the sale of agricultural land. In cases like this, people in all headquarters are saying, “Something has to be done.” So the parties sat down at the negotiation table as though pushing the hawks in their own camps into the background.
Friday’s events showed that they have left the trenches and are intending to react to their opponent’s every move. It was probably the president who first broke the truce with his veto on the law on the Cabinet of Ministers and others passed by parliament. Until the last moment he obviously had not anticipated that Tymoshenko and her faction would dare give the coalition systematic rather than just one-time support. Now the president’s team is up the creek and can only pin its hopes on the Constitutional Court (which is still idle and may be demoralized by publicized (dis)information about million- hryvnia bribes) and also on the power structures. But the coalition is pressing on very forcefully or, as the opposition chooses to put it, impudently.
On Friday parliament appointed a new deputy speaker, Volodymyr Radchenko, who will deal with the power agencies. He declared his intention to put an end to the “chaotic tasking” of these agencies and said the Armed Forces of Ukraine need to be reformed. Among the top-priority tasks he mentioned is coordinating the work with all the power agencies in order to ensure that laws are obeyed in Ukraine.
The Presidential Secretariat already had a counterpart office. It was occupied by Arsenii Yatseniuk, who was assisted by former Security Service head Ihor Drizhchany. But the people in these counterpart offices must belong to different classes of political weight, and their influence on the power structures is unsurpassed. In short, the coalition is confidently winning points in the struggle for control over them. But now the ball is in the president’s court, and he is also capable of powerful moves. If only he and, more importantly, some of his aides do not lose their nerve. Otherwise the situation may become extremely critical.
Under these conditions, as past articles in The Day have stated, the decisive vote belongs to the BYuT and its leader, Tymoshenko. What is guiding her today? In the beginning, the most plausible theory was that she had agreed to vote for the law on the Cabinet of Ministers in exchange for the coalition’s votes in support of the law on the opposition. Friday’s voting for this law in the first reading provides strong supportive evidence.
There is another theory. It is a known fact that Tymoshenko, who has now unbraided her hair (which many interpret as a sort of female signal indicating a change in the party line) and dismissed the people’s parliament on Independence Square, appears to be the most innocent politician at the moment, especially as seen against the backdrop of people’s dissatisfaction with the recent utility rate hike. She is the only one who can be interested in new parliamentary elections. Once appointed, she will undoubtedly be able to prove to her electorate the strategic wisdom of all her moves.
On Friday Tymoshenko said that her bloc voted that way in order to “establish order” and “not to disgrace the country before the whole world with our domestic political scandals.” She added, “We believe that the people who essentially ruined the first Orange team, ruined everything they possibly could, and personally nominated Yanukovych for prime minister cannot reproach us for anything.”
Is it possible that behind these words an experienced politician like Tymoshenko is concealing a desire to urge the president, who is virtually powerless and seems to be cornered, to disband parliament and call new elections?
