An event which took place two weeks ago provided an answer to the question about Viktor Yushchenko’s strategic mistake that caused his ratings plumet over the past several years. [In my analysis] I am going to refer to the outcome of the elections rather than the results of sociological surveys that have been intensively publicized and discussed by both those who commissioned them and those who carried them out.
In 2004, Yushchenko obtained the majority of votes at the presidential elections. He assumed his office after the unconstitutional third round: most voters favored Yushchenko, but, in an attempt to cut the ground from under his feet, certain individuals spent a lot of effort so that this would happen with a violation of the law.
After a mere two years, the pro-presidential bloc won only in three oblasts at the parliamentary elections. After one more year, at the snap parliamentary elections, it prevailed only in one oblast, Ukraine’s smallest oblast in terms of population. The rating of the president, who had won general elections four years before, dropped to the level of the governor in the smallest oblast. Why did this happen?
The president has recently been criticized by virtually everyone who cares to express an opinion. Let me be frank: I did not vote for Yushchenko as a sign of protest against the third round because I believed that it was a time bomb put under the president’s chair. However, I accepted president-elect Viktor Yushchenko as my own president.
When the rating of the state leader drops, it is a very bad thing because this is my president, the president of my country where my children live and where, God willing, my grandchildren will also live. Therefore, my goal is not to criticize the president but rather find the main cause-the strategic mistake that had such unfortunate consequences.
What was this event that enabled me to find an answer to this question? Two weeks ago the president issued certain edicts cutting the number of government employees in the presidential branch of power. It turned out that least wanted were the employees at the Institute of Strategic Research and presidential advisors. This reduction was largely reminiscent of an episode from the movie based on Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Heart of a Dog in which Sharikov and Shvonder tried to claim the ”unnecessary” space from a scientist. I do not know the last name of the person who had prepared this kind of edict for the president, but I believe that the country would benefit a lot more if such Sharikovs and Shvonders were sacked, while analysts were kept and listened to.
As far as presidential advisors are concerned, I totally agree that the president does not need the ones he had. At the same time, I believe that advisors are the most needed group of specialists for a statesman. These people should be professional analysts who are able to process tremendous amounts of information, discern regularities in the whirl of events, and forecast their development. They should also have sufficient experience in life and think in terms of the state. These kinds of advisors can warn the head of the state of a threat in a timely fashion and offer algorithms with which to resolve problems. The president should listen to the opinions of his advisors, rather than godfathers of his children, in-laws, brothers, and dear friends.
The country would greatly benefit if its president held regular meetings with the leading statesmen. I do not mean meetings at which the president delivers long speeches while all the others listen to him. I mean an exchange of opinions, when the president is listening and specialists are speaking. The entire world knowns such names as Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Yevgeny Primakov, and others.
Our country also has an abundant supply of excellent professionals: who would be a better advisor to the current president on political issues than Leonid Kravchuk, our first president? Similarly, you cannot find a better advisor on security issues in Ukraine than Gen. Yevhen Marchuk. Or who understands the problems of Ukrainian science better than Borys Paton? In every field it is possible to find a person who has authority — not in virtue of their office but because of their professional level. A failure to employ the intellect of the country’s leading specialists is an unacceptable luxury for any country.
Considering that our president is now left without advisors, I would like to act as an external advisor representing the only source of power, which is the people, and draw his attention to the fact that an analysis of certain documents that emerge from his Secretariat creates the impression that in the Presidential Secretariat there is now a critical mass that can cause an uncontrolled chain reaction in the state at any moment in time.
