In 1997 Oleksandr Yeliashkevych, being a deputy head of the parliamentary faction Reforms, main political opponent of Pavlo Lazarenko and Leonid Kuchma, made quite an unexpected decision: he concluded a political agreement with Yulia Tymoshenko. Many were shocked back then. She was called a “gas princess.” And suddenly her career soars. She becomes the prime minister. He is living in exile – the only Ukrainian statesman who received political asylum in the US.
Fifteen years later Tymoshenko goes to jail again. Arsenii Yatseniuk, who speaks on behalf of the united opposition, states that “Tymoshenko will be with us, for sure.” But what the opposition needs at the least to this end is to win in the forthcoming parliamentary elections. How real is this? What has the recent forum of the united opposition shown? Can the situation with Tymoshenko be resolved? These and other questions are raised in The Day’s interview with Verkhovna Rada MP of the second and third convocations Oleksandr YELIASHKEVYCH.
Mr. Yeliashkevych, there were so many nice and, let us be frank, right words said at the Forum of the United Opposition. The forum spelled out a concrete program of actions to be taken in case of victory in the parliamentary elections. But the main question of The Day – how the opposition is going to win these elections – still remains unanswered.
“I personally have mixed feelings about the forum. The point is Arsenii Yatseniuk made a very spectacular speech which achieved its goal – to be liked by voters. But Yatseniuk’s program statements are essentially of a disputable nature. They include points to argue about, accept, and reject. In a word, experts will have enough work to do until the end of the election campaign – they should assess the reality and populism of the said words. In my view, Yatseniuk has achieved the main goal: now that he has debuted at the forum he is becoming not just a politician who will be allowed to run for the presidency but a potential number-one leader – of course, if Yulia Tymoshenko stays away from this process.”
What do you mean by “allowed to run”? Who by?
“It is an open secret in what horrible situation Yulia Tymoshenko is today. From the legal angle, she cannot run not only for a parliamentary seat, but also for the presidency.
“What occurred on Mykhailivska Square last Saturday worried me very much. Except for perfunctory appeals to Tymoshenko and the sincere speech of her daughter Yevhenia, I heard no concrete proposals about how to release the opposition leader from prison. The point is that the forum was held right after Pubic Health Minister Raisa Bohatyriova made a very important statement: from now on it is Lutz Harms, a German citizen and Tymoshenko’s attending physician, who is responsible for her health.
“I would not like my words to materialize, but I am forced to make this statement. In the current situation, certain forces are interested in Yulia Tymoshenko being removed, which will deal a crushing blow to the president and his inner circle. These forces can see to it that Tymoshenko will cease to be an object of political process. I mean the most terrible – lethal – outcome. For this reason, Yatseniuk should have made a key statement, for the whole world to hear, that responsibility for Tymoshenko’s life and health in fact lies with the government which must take all the necessary actions to ward off any provocations and provide security for Ukraine’s most popular politician.”
Who stands to gain from the scenario you are speaking about?
“I deliberately do not want to concretize, but, believe me, there are domestic and, especially, foreign forces that are interested in this. So I want my statement to help avert this scenario. There are so many forces interested in aggravating the current situation and they are so multifaceted that it is impossible to name just one source. The leadership with the current president at the head does not suit many both in Ukraine and abroad. Therefore, a sacrifice would just speed up the solution of problems for those who are not averse to antihuman methods for achieving their goals.
“To avoid risks, parliament should have discussed long ago a draft law that allows placing one under house arrest in this kind of situations. Moreover, both the opposition and the government should be interested in this. The main goal of the opposition is to save the live and health of their leader, while the government should at last understand that Tymoshenko and Yanukovych are Siamese twins now. Should, God forbid, something happen to Tymoshenko, Yanukovych will end up in dire straits. The government is so far unaware of this – its actions are not just puzzling but flatly shocking the outside world.
“There is one more method which the opposition could adopt. If the opposition MPs think that unlawful methods, including physical violence, are being applied to their leader, they could subject the government’s representatives to human obstruction of sorts – for example, not to shake hands with them or not to address them as ‘dear.’ In that case the powers that be would understand that their actions are immoral. Even Philipp Lahm, captain of the German soccer national team, who, incidentally, knows about Tymoshenko from newspapers only, says he would not shake the hand of the man who currently leads the Ukrainian state. Why did the opposition MPs fail to choose this? Instead, some of them feel kinship with their governmental counterparts and even visit the latter’s high-society events. This creates certain discomfort in society, and people simply do not believe in the opposition’s sincerity and seriousness.”
Why do you think Bohatyriova made this statement?
“Ms. Bohatyriova in fact made a very sound statement. She is very well aware that to be at the receiving end in this process, especially if this concerns her friends (she openly says Rinat Akhmetov is her friend), means to set oneself up. The oligarchic war is still going on not only inside, but also outside Ukraine. As Akhmetov is Ukraine’s leading oligarch today, his rivals could take advantage of this situation and try to disenable the big-time businessman to have an impact on the processes now underway in this country. Let us ask the questions: who controls the nurses who attend Tymoshenko? Who controls the administration of various medicines? In other words, it is difficult to find a more favorable situation to physically remove the rival. And whoever is aware of this is trying to decline their responsibility. But to decline responsibility means in this case to put Tymoshenko at greater risks.”
To what extent is the opposition aware of the situation?
“I am inclined to believe it is a case of misunderstanding and underestimation. For if we suppose it is something different, this may have a fatal outcome for the opposition. They must come clean on their mistakes at last. For example, I don’t know if they think it was a mistake to elect the parliament speaker in 2007 by the so-called secret ballot, when every ballot was under control. Were the events of 2007 – blocking the Constitutional Court and demanding that the parliament be dissolved – a mistake or not? Does the opposition consider it a mistake to foil the early parliamentary elections in 2008, when it prevented the absolutely legitimate presidential decree from being fulfilled? And what about the notorious negotiations with the Party of Regions in 2009? I consider all this as mistakes, and what do they think? And the election of Volodymyr Lytvyn as parliament speaker, when he did not meet many criteria to assume this office? And the principle of forming the lists?”
Incidentally, Yulia Tymoshenko admitted mistakes about the lists in her latest appeals to the public. Do the oppositionists really need to be taken to prison to atone for their “sins”?
“Those who were present on Mykhailivska Square do not feel the gravity of the mistakes they made because fate not only left them free, but also gave them a chance to realize themselves as politicians and statesmen. They have long exhausted their mistake-making resource. Any new mistake will be crucial for them. Judging by Tymoshenko’s interviews, she is aware of this. This is why she is calling for not just a correction of mistakes but for concrete actions that would convince society that the opposition is becoming different. But those who spoke at the forum are not yet aware of this. By all accounts, the opposition may be cherishing an illusion that that stock prices of Yatseniuk & Co. Ltd. have sharply gone up. If this is the case, it may soon turn out that what Ms. Tymoshenko once said about having to communicate by tapping on the prison wall was really prophetic.
“I can so far see declarations that far from always correspond to the opposition’s real possibilities. It is so far unable to effectively protect its leaders, let alone do some more serious things. The oppositionists venture to take up the problems that need at least 300 votes in the next parliament to be solved. There are two options here: either they are very naive or they are using this technique intentionally in order to show the voters that they are sure of a victory. But I think they are very well aware that the opposition will win in the proportional representation constituencies but will suffer a defeat in the first-past-the-post districts. Only a careful recruitment of personnel can reverse the situation. One must, first of all, select people who are prepared for serious oppositional activity rather than for hooliganism, such as blocking the podium.”
Failure to make the lists public means that the opposition does have problems with personnel recruitment. Don’t you think they can solve them in the remaining time?
“I would not like to blame now the opposition which is already in a difficult situation. But it is a proven fact that the commercialization of electoral lists in 2006-07 eventually caused the sad consequences which Tymoshenko and other oppositionists are suffering from today. Should this approach continue to be taken, we will see the lists in the very last minute. This is being done to prevent society from appraising those on the lists in good time. Yet, in reality, the lists’ rough copies were drawn up long ago.
“The opposition cites two reasons why it does not open the lists. Firstly, they say if they disclose their representatives prematurely, the government will unleash terrible repressions against them. It is not a serious reason. The government has sufficient means and ways to get information about the potential opposition candidates even before the entire opposition can do so. Therefore, the government can in any case exert pressure on one candidate or another. But if the opposition had made the lists public in good time, any actions of the government could be viewed as fighting the opposition. And as long as the latter is not doing so, the government can always say: look, they are not disclosing the lists because there is something wrong in the life stories of these people.
“Secondly, the opposition says that if the current MPs do not find themselves on the lists or do not become single candidates in the first-past-the-post constituencies, they will, at best, stop their oppositional activity or, at worst, defect to the current parliamentary majority. I would advise the opposition to hold a serious and frank inside talk so that the people who cannot be, for some reasons, represented in the next parliament should know their further prospects.
“Those who will draw up the lists better and put them to a debate will stand a real chance to markedly improve their gains in the next elections. Now that there are a huge number of people disgruntled with politicians, the openness of candidates might benefit any political force, all the more so if there are true lawmakers on the lists.”
Monitoring the elections is an important point. Do you think the opposition will be able to defend its result?
“The forum rhetoric was of rather an insulting nature for the government. One who displays this kind of rhetoric must be aware of the government’s likely response. I cannot see so far any mechanisms that the opposition has developed to defend the election results.”
You have not been public in the past few years. The opposition, as well as our readers, can ask you: what caused you to appear this time? Do you know much about Ukrainian politics?
“That I am not public does not mean that I do not know much about Ukrainian politics. I always appear when I see that if I do not say some things, nobody else will do so and change the situation that is following the worst ever scenario.”
Are you sure?
“I think this country is too full of declarations and shows but is practically devoid of real deeds. I want to see an altogether different quality of politics. A politician should be strong both in word and in deed. He should know how to find the key words to persuade the populace and his political followers that his actions are right, know how to rally people together in order to achieve the final result. And, what is more, he should act. I become very pessimistic when I see that the actions of statesmen and genuine debates are being replaced with shows that present so many lies and hypocrisy that, if a lie detector were installed there, it would immediately break down.
“I am here and I am ready to do a concrete job if this is necessary for certain participants of the political process. It is now the time of the teams that can achieve their goals through party lists and in first-past-the-post constituencies.”
What can you offer concretely?
“What arouses my greatest concern is the way the voting is done, the votes are counted, and the true expression of popular will is reflected. Today, figuratively speaking, members of electoral commissions are lining up for being bribed. Those who want to rig the elections and have ample finances to do so can implement their plans by means of concrete mechanisms, such as rewriting voting reports, tampering with ballots, etc. Video filming the whole process is the only way to minimize rigging. I could assist in establishing an all-Ukrainian video filming center that could show the election process in real time to millions of people. All the more so that, for some reasons, this video filming tendency is now popular in some former USSR countries – it began in Russia and continued in Armenia.
“In Russia, this practice was introduced by Vladimir Putin who, for some personal considerations, launched a state-sponsored election video filming scheme in order to allay conflicts in society and increase confidence in the election results. This practice can be modernized (in Russia, only a part of the process was filmed) and used in Ukraine. It is about video filming not only the voting process, but also the vote count, the announcement of results, and the signing of voting reports. I am sure that, although this project is costly, it will be useful for both the opposition and the government because the now existing and future risks of conflict are incommensurate with the consequences. The idea of video filming would ease tension, which is extremely important for society. Whatever the election results may be, society would retain the culture and traditions of a democratic election process, which is important not so much for the current situation as for the future elections which I am sure will be held very shortly after 2012.”
Opinion polls show that Vitali Klitschko’s party UDAR is also standing real chances to go through to parliament. Incidentally, he was not present at the forum. What do you think about his chances?
“To appear at such forums, one should receive answers to concrete questions before this. If they unite, how will they cooperate? As far as I know, there are no answers to questions like this. So Vitali Klitschko sees no reason why he should come and be a ‘stage background.’ On the other hand, there is also a downside because his failure to appear at the forum causes resentment among its participants. So he chose quite a wise, albeit hackneyed, way – a written address of welcome.
“Klitschko, as well as the other subjects, should now ponder, first of all, over the election lists. What is especially prompting him to do so is the brilliant rhetoric of Yatseniuk. It would be unwise for Klitschko to challenge him in terms of publicity and aggressiveness. But if he included in his list the people who would allow one to say that there are brilliant politicians in Ukraine, this would be a very strong and effective move.”
For example?
“I am surprised that political parties are ignoring some figures that could strengthen any list one way or another. They are people with enormous experience. There are many of them. I am surprised that representatives of various political forces are not ‘hunting’ for these people.”
And are you being “hunted”?
“If I receive this kind of invitations, I will consider them very seriously – judging by what concrete assistance I could render to one political party or another, to what extent this assistance is necessary, and in what way I will be able to fulfill my vision of processes in the next parliament.
“These elections can be called undemocratic right now. How can they be democratic if the opposition and the government are in unequal conditions from the very beginning? When our Prosecutor General’s Office is playing the role of medics who work under the motto ‘There are no healthy people, there are people still to be examined’? The Prosecutor General’s Office is trying to carry out a comprehensive examination of every oppositionist and show this X-ray photo to society, forgetting that there is also the government that can produce X-ray pictures of perhaps even more dangerous diseases.”
As for the “comprehensive examination” of Tymoshenko, you told The Day in 2007 that “unfortunately, Ms. Tymoshenko’s words do not always correspond to her real deeds…”
“I suggest we talk about Tymoshenko and her team later. In 2007 I was the only follower of Tymoshenko in parliament, so I know quite a lot about those events. In other words, I do have things to say. I want to take a pause now and influence the actions of certain politicians in a non-public way to save the life of Tymoshenko. And it depends on the behavior and actions of these politicians whether or not the future conflicts in Ukraine will be of fatal nature.”
