Joshua Tucker
Yesterday,
the president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, issued a call for the
current prime minister of Ukraine, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, to resign, after which
Yatsenyuk survived
a vote of no confidence. To help make sense of these
events – and their implication for both the short and long-term future of
Ukraine – I emailed political scientist Oxana
Shevel of
Tufts University for her reaction. What follows is a lightly edited transcript
of her answers to my questions:
Joshua
Tucker: What exactly happened yesterday in Ukraine?
Oxana
Shevel: The Ukrainian cabinet delivered its performance
report to the Ukrainian parliament, and the parliament voted the cabinet’s
performance unsatisfactory. However, the parliament failed to vote no
confidence in the government and prime minister Arsenii Yatsenyuk.
194
lawmakers voted in favor of the no-confidence motion, 32 votes short of the
necessary 226 for the vote to pass. The outcome of the vote was uncertain until
the end, and many believed that the government might resign or be dismissed,
especially after Poroshenko publicly called for the
cabinet’s resignation.
Immediately
after the vote of no confidence failed, allegations – based on
analysis of the role call of the vote – surfaced that the president was not
sincere in his call for a complete government reboot and therefore in his
stated commitment to clean government. In particular, 22 members of the
pro-presidential Petro Poroshenko Block failed to support the no confidence
motion, including president’s closest associates and the business partner of
his chief of staff. Porosheko sacrificed Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who
resigned today following the president’s appeal for him to also step down. If
allowing Yatsenyuk and the government to stay on while sacrificing Shokin was
meant to show Western supporters that Ukrainian leadership is serious about
reforms, the strategy may have worked. In today’s press briefing, the U.S.
State Department’s deputy spokesperson called Shokin’s
resignation “a signal of Ukraine’s seriousness about its reform process.”
JT:
What precipitated these events? Why now?
OS: Dissatisfaction
with the government in Ukraine has been brewing for some time, in light of a
devaluing currency, a hike in utilities prices against a drop in the living
standards, and allegations of continued corruption in the highest echelons of
the government. According to a representative poll from December
2015, just 8.7 percent of the population trusted the government and
only 16.8 percent trusted the president. According to another representative
2015 poll, only 7.8
percent and 12.3 percent, respectively, believed that the prime minister
and the president want to eradicate corruption.
The immediate
prelude to the current crisis was the Feb. 4 resignation of reformist Economy
Minister Aivaras Abromavicius, one of a group of foreign officials not linked
to local corruption networks, who was hired to implement reforms after a
pro-Western government took power in 2014.
Abromavicius stepped down, alleging that corrupt
officials had blocked systematic reform and were attempting to gain influence
over state enterprises. Seven other cabinet ministers resigned as well,
although in the following days some of the officials recalled
their resignations after intense negotiations with the president.
JT:
What is at stake here?
OS: There
are several important issues at stake, starting with the fate of a $17.5
billion international rescue loan from the IMF that Ukraine needs. A broader
issue is whether or not the post-Euromaidan Ukrainian government can finally
shed a legacy of endemic corruption that has plagued Ukraine since independence
and move forward on the path of reforms, transparency and accountability, or if
special interest, including individuals close to the president, prime minister
and Yanukovych-era oligarchs, will continue to exercise informal – if not
formal – control over economic decisions of the government.
The current government that came to power following
the victory of the Euromaidan protest in early 2014 that erupted in a society frustrated
with systemic graft and corruption perpetuated by former president Viktor
Yanukovych. The victory of Euromaidan, dubbed as the “revolution of dignity” in
Ukraine, created high expectations for the new government to live up to the
expectations of clean politics for which scores of protesters sacrificed their
lives.
Increasingly, however, the Ukrainian public has been
getting disillusioned with the pace and scope of reforms while investigative
reporters continued to reveal evidence of “gray cardinals” and business
associates of high level officials, including the president and prime minister,
attempting to advance their economic interests and sabotage anti-corruption
measures.
JT:
Are we likely to see additional political change in Ukraine in the coming
months? Will the government resign? Will there be early elections?
What does all this mean for Ukraine’s longer-range future?
OS: Yesterday’s
vote of no confidence in the government failed, and the prime minister did not
resign himself. According to Ukrainian legislation, the parliament can vote no
confidence in the cabinet only once during each legislative session. This means
that the current cabinet and prime minister could potentially stay until the
end of July when the current legislative session ends.
However, given the clear lack of support for the prime
minister within the governing coalition of four pro-Western parties (Petro
Poroshenko Block, Popular Front, Self-Reliance and Fatherland), it is highly
unlikely that the government can just continue business as usual or be able to
govern effectively going forward. The most immediate outcome will likely be
some degree of reshuffling of the cabinet, but this is unlikely to address
either widespread popular dissatisfaction and lack of confidence in the
Yatsenyuk cabinet, nor internal disagreements within the formal governing
coalition.
For now, most of the Ukrainian political class seems
to want to avoid early elections. The president cautioned in his address yesterday
that when Ukraine is fighting Russian aggression against its territorial
integrity that political wars within Ukraine are “a dream of our northeastern
neighbor,” and promised to do all he can to keep the coalition together
and avoid early elections.
Early elections are also not in the interest of
parties in the current governing coalition which are likely to do less well
than they did in the November 2014 election, given the lack of economic
improvement and other clear accomplishments. The Opposition Bloc, which unites
former Yanukovych backers, could improve their standing, but not significantly
enough for early elections to be clearly appealing. The fact that the
Opposition Bloc deputies walked out during the no-confidence vote rather than
voting against the government suggests that prominent oligarchs such as Rinat
Akhmetov favor advancing their economic interest with the current government
rather than through new elections.
However,
without either the prime minister and current cabinet’s resignation or early
elections, it is unclear how further deepening of the political crisis can be
avoided. The government needs support in the legislature to pass bills, and if
the current government has to rely on support not from the formal pro-Western
coalition but from an ad-hoc coalition of business interests and oligarchs,
including those who used to be in the Yanukovych camp, this will only further
deepen societal disillusionment and the sentiment that the post-Euromaidan
leaders have betrayed the sacrifices of the 2014 “Revolution of dignity” when
people rose against the corrupt and kleptocratic rule of former president.
If two of the smaller parties that have been most
critical of the Yatsenyuk government, Self-Reliance and Fatherland, formally
leave the ruling coalition, it will shrink to below half of the legislative
seats required for the coalition to exist, which would deepen the political
crisis and potentially make early elections unavoidable.
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