Protagonists of Orange Revolution Vie Again
In an Altered Ukraine, Backers of President, Premier Face Off in Parliamentary Election

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, September 30, 2007

KIEV, Ukraine, Sept. 29 -- Ukraine's weary voters go to the polls Sunday for the third time in three years, a testament not only to the country's incessant political infighting but also to the Orange Revolution's legacy of genuinely open political competition.

Since the popular revolt in 2004, which overturned fraudulent presidential results, Ukraine has lurched from one political crisis to the next. The leading actors in the original drama continue to define Ukrainian politics, hard-nosed players on a merry-go-round of intrigue, shifting alliances and brinkmanship.

According to opinion polls, the coalition that led the street protests that swept Viktor Yushchenko into the presidency in early 2005 is running even with the Party of Regions, led by Viktor Yanukovych, the Orange Revolution's villain who reemerged as prime minister in March 2006.

The tight margin expected in Sunday's parliamentary election seems like a prescription for more of the kind of conflict that this year threatened to thrust different parts of the country's security services into violent political strife.

But for all the apparent chaos, Ukraine's political system stands out from much of the post-Soviet world as one in which there is a real choice between fierce rivals.

Political pluralism is visible in the country's lively debates, diverse media and the buoyant final rallies that all sides held without any hindrance in the capital of Kiev on Friday, the last day of campaigning.

"The Orange Revolution established an irreversible course," said Vadym Karasiov, head of the Institute of Global Strategies, a research organization in Kiev. "There is instability, but it's dynamic and no one will allow it to boil over. There is now a free political marketplace in which voters don't want anyone to have absolute power."

That point is now acknowledged by some in Yanukovych's Party of Regions, which long seethed over Yushchenko's ascension to the presidency.

"The Orange Revolution indeed changed this country," said Leonid Kozhara, a former diplomat and foreign policy adviser to Yanukovych who is running on the Party of Regions ticket. "If Yanukovych won in 2004, then we would have seen a different Ukraine. But now we see a different Yanukovych and a different country. He is more democratic. He looks more like a Western politician than a Russian politician, for example. He accepts political diversity."

Yushchenko's allies still view Yanukovych as an autocrat-in-waiting. His mask still falls, they say, including recently when he called Yulia Tymoshenko, a firebrand leader of the Orange Revolution, "a cow on ice."

"Either you vote for changes in your lives or you vote to bring back the past and those who have divided us and infected the very body of our nation," Yushchenko said in an election eve appeal.

Voters, however, seem exhausted by the political rhetoric and unhappy about this forced early election. The country was ill-prepared, and problems with voter lists already have led to mutual accusations of likely election fraud; court battles will almost certainly ensue.

"We are so sick and tired," said Marusia Garaschenko, 65, a pensioner who lives in the village of Zaruddia, about 60 miles west of Kiev. "I don't know who to vote for. All I want is for Ukraine to be more prosperous."

Yushchenko addressed such sentiments this week on Ukrainian television.

"Ukrainians, please cheer up," he said. "Ukraine has a great chance on September 30, and it must use it. There is no alternative to democracy in the country."

After less than a year in government following the Orange Revolution, Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, his most prominent ally and onetime prime minister, fell out amid accusations of corruption.

The Orange split opened the way for Yanukovych to become prime minister after his party received a plurality of votes in parliamentary elections in March 2006. Yushchenko reluctantly nominated his arch-rival for the job four months later.

Since then, Yushchenko and Yanukovych have clashed bitterly over the division of powers between the executive and legislative branches, a standoff that threatened to become violent when Yushchenko dissolved parliament this spring and called the early elections. It took three presidential decrees to finally set Sunday's election date because the Party of Regions resisted the president's directive.

Yushchenko and Tymoshenko appear to have reconciled. The leader of Yushchenko's Our Ukraine party, Yuri Lutsenko, told several thousand supporters at a rally Friday night in Kiev that "we have signed an agreement with Tymoshenko's bloc" to form a new government.

Nonetheless, there will probably be a long period of tough bargaining between the apparent allies should they win enough seats to form a government. Yushchenko is likely to seek some institutional control over Tymoshenko to guarantee that her second incarnation as prime minister is more successful than her first.

"We have learned from our mistakes," said Mykola Katerynchuk, head of the European Platform for Ukraine, part of the coalition running under the Our Ukraine banner. "The president has renewed his team."

Both Yushchenko and Tymoshenko draw most of their support from the Ukrainian-speaking western and central parts of the country. They endorse pro-Western positions -- including increasingly close ties with NATO -- that would distance the country from Russia.

Yanukovych, whose base is in the Russian-speaking east, has said NATO membership should be subject to a referendum, where it would almost certainly be defeated. He also wants to make Russian a second official language, a deeply emotional issue in the linguistically divided country.

Opinion polls give the Our Ukraine coalition about 13 percent of the vote and Tymoshenko's bloc roughly 23 percent.

Yanukovych's party has the support of about 33 percent of likely voters and, in alliance with the Communists, is also within striking distance of power, according to opinion polls. But the right to nominate the prime minister lies with the president, and "Yushchenko will resist to the end" before nominating Yanukovych, according to Karasiov.

Yushchenko, he said, might accept a Party of Regions government led by someone other than Yanukovych in tandem with an agreed package of constitutional reforms to clarify the division of powers.

"If our victory is so obvious, so clear to everyone, it means that Yanukovych has a big chance to be elected to prime minister. If less, it opens room for compromise," Kozhara said. "But Yanukovych remains the most popular politician in this country."