30 March 2006
Right now the situation with the Verkhovna Rada coalition is a complete paradox. On the surface, everyone wants and expects to have an Orange coalition. This is a romantic, nostalgic expectation. It’s something that most of the population wants and something that the West expects. Still, an Orange coalition automatically means the opposition along the line of separation that emerged during the last two elections…
The Orange team was on the battlefront for freedom, democracy and human rights, and against persecution. On the “Blue and White” side, the population of the country’s eastern regions protested, because they don’t want revolution, the Ukrainian language, Europe or NATO. And these are the issues that dominated the election race. If we continue along these lines and automatically raise this kind of protest once more, we are setting up a dangerous time-bomb.
A different kind of coalition, combining Nasha Ukraina and Party of the Regions is absolutely impossible, at first glance. It looks nigh immoral from the point of view of those who participated in the revolution, because they were battling against this same Party of the Regions then. Still, this kind of coalition is supported by the argument that it would allow the country to stop splitting along an east-west vector. At the moment, everybody is looking only at the electoral and political arguments and not at all at nation-building arguments. Only the president is talking about this, but it seems as though no one wants to listen to him.
Demand for a program
Still, I am more than convinced that if work with the coalition is done properly—and by “properly” I don’t mean dividing up posts but talking about a common program—, then everything will gradually find its place and all the country’s political forces will begin to look at things a bit differently. This refers in the first place to Ms. Tymoshenko. At the moment, everybody is looking at the formation of a coalition as the completion of the electoral race, rather than as the start of a completely new era, a new life and completely new tasks. Still, I think the necessary new views will inevitably emerge.
If we are to consider what combination of coalition parties will be best for the economy, then it’s important to admit that the ideal coalition for economic development is that in which one group of the government opposition focuses on social justice and the other on how to improve conditions for doing business. Then there is some guarantee that there will be both movement and incentive to think about investment and the development of both large and small enterprises. In western countries, there operates a principle that one group of parties fight to restrict business, which would like to see maximize its taxes and costs, while the other group represents the interests of that same business. Ukraine doesn’t have that kind of split just yet, although it looks as though it may happen. Nasha Ukraina and the Party of the Regions naturally fall into the liberal end of economic development, while Ms. Tymoshenko is the social justice leader—although during the election pretty much everybody claimed to be fighting for social justice. In the end, I think that this kind of split will happen in Ukraine and will replace the current territorial split.
Ukraine is still somewhat lacking in structure. We have only just had our first elections of this kind. Before this, we were fighting for freedom. Our previous elections were simply for the purpose of establishing a democratic foundation. In essence, between the revolution and the VR elections, the basis for a proper democracy was being established and enshrined. In my opinion, this is probably the greatest achievement of Viktor Yushchenko and Nasha Ukraina, because they have proved that democracy works in Ukraine. Would it be possible for the party in power to lose an election in a totalitarian country? Of course not. In this sense this election has been an enormous victory, especially given that only a year has passed since the events on the Maidan. Indeed, it was not easy to gain this victory, to not succumb to using administrative means of and to really entrench freedom of speech. If this hadn’t been done, then the rest would have had no meaning at all.
The Government’s challenge
For the new Government, the first task must be to very clearly structure the work of the coalition Government. There has to be a very strong program that has been agreed on all points so that, later on, there isn’t a situation where one member of the coalition says one thing, and another member something completely different. A specific body or capacity needs to be set up with the capacity to coordinate among political forces both within the coalition and between the coalition and the entire legislature. At the moment there is no such institution, but this has to be established from nothing. This is Job #1.
An equally important step is institutionalization—the establishment of procedures that will make it clear what everybody is supposed to do. Political will alone will not be enough to develop such a complicated system. But this is the issue on which shifting the state machine into democratic gear will turn. Until now, even if some politicians were democratic, our bureaucrats continued to work based on soviet principles. They neither knew nor understood their new functions.
One important task is clearly protecting property rights, which, hand in hand with the previous two tasks, will go a long way to destroying corruption. Clearly defining government functions and the rights of citizens to property and fair competition make it possible to fight corruption effectively. And this also means that judicial reform is needed. It will be impossible to ensure democracy without an independent court system.
Two additional serious economic issues need to be raised that will have to be resolved by the new Government. The first is establishing civil oversight of public resources, that is, oversight of the Budget. The Budget process has to be overhauled completely and such principles established that will truly establish transparency. This is all standard in Europe and has been described in great detail by Europeans. We’ve already started down this path and all that is needed is to carry out reform in this area to the end.
The second issue is how to make money. Here we are talking about the freedom of enterprise and establishing the necessary conditions to entrench this freedom. So far, little has changed in this sphere, but at least the trends have changed. First of all, we need to make one rule: “Keep your hands off those who know how to do something right themselves.” They should become Ukraine’s “sacred cow.”
If we look further at serious sectoral problems, then energy conservation sticks out. Thanks to the gas war with Russia, we are lucky that this question was finally raised on a nationwide level. This, you might say, is Mr. Putin’s greatest gift to Ukraine. In any case, this issue, as well as the issue of diversifying energy suppliers, alternative sources of energy, and so on, have now become state policy, which is a very positive thing.
