Twenty years ago, Oles Doniy was one of the organizers of the student hunger strike – the so-called Revolution on Granite. Today, he is one of a few people that not only rambles about Ukrainian culture and statehood, but try and bring their ideas to fruition. He works a lot with the young creative generation and organizes Ukrainian art festivals. Just as before, he believes that if you champion the idea of cleanliness you should not toss litter around
 |
|
Photo: UNIAN |
Only a few days are left to the presidential elections. Are the parliamentarians already preparing for re-formatting?
O. D. Of course not. How can a real re-formatting of the parliament be prepared when half of the Verkhovna Rada is convinced that Tymoshenko will win and the other half believes it will be Yanukovych. There are conformists that are pondering how to guarantee their political future in different situations and have in mind several variants, including jumping the bandwagon. Realistically, the Rada will begin re-formatting only after the presidential elections and party leaders will be the decision makers.
What will be the fate of the factions of Tymoshenko and Yanukovych should their leader lose?
O. D. There will undoubtedly be elements of cooperation between the key political players. A coalition majority is impossible without such cooperation, but this is only the first point. The second point is that a strong and structured opposition will be a matter of concern both for President Tymoshenko and President Yanukovych. For this reason, regardless of who takes office, the president and his or her team will be thinking about how to neutralize the opposition. The best mechanism of neutralization is involving the opposition as an ally in the parliament and access to distribution of posts in the executive body. Tymoshenko and Yanukovych will be forced to take into account their coalition as well as their opponents. In the first stage, both will be forced to care about strengthening their own positions and power. Re-election of the Verkhovna Rada and staff issues will be the next stage. At the moment it is difficult to imagine the essence of vertical changes, I mean cadre changes across the country. This is a question of bargaining and negotiations.
Tymoshenko has better chances of strengthening her influence because she already has a coalition; she simply needs to preserve what she has. If she wins, this won’t be very difficult to do. It will be much harder for the Party of Regions, as they will have to try and reach an agreement directly with Tymoshenko or attempt to win over the majority of centers of influence inside Our Ukraine, which is a difficult task in and of itself.
 |
|
Photo: UNIAN |
Why? Just recently, there was an attempt to remove Martynenko from the position he occupies in the faction. With the return of Kyrylenko, one can expect a change of course and a possible split of the coalition. But in the end he decided to form his own party…
O. D. That was an unsuccessful calculation of interests. On the one hand there is Yushchenko, who was interested in weakening Tymoshenko. The scheme of reinstating Kyrylenko as head of the faction was convenient, perhaps with the aim of further re-grouping of the coalition or perhaps even the dismissal of Tymoshenko. On the other hand, Kyrylenko had a certain desire for moral satisfaction. But this mechanism was non-functional from the very start, even though it was based on real problems inside the faction. In fact, after Martynenko was elected head of the faction (on January 16, 2009 after Vyacheslav Kyrylenko tendered his letter of resignation as a sign of protest against the decision of 37 MPs out of 72 MPs of Our Ukraine’s faction to sign a coalition deal with the BYT and the Lytvyn Bloc – Weekly.ua), the faction had a quorum only once. This basically means that though the leadership of the party is legitimate, the faction is essentially legally powerless.
By the way, mistakes were made when the leadership of the faction was being elected. At the time I proposed giving the position of first deputy to representatives of the minority (Kyrylenko’s group). But a different path was taken and all deputies were elected only from representatives of the new majority. Generally speaking, seeing as the faction was being formed from representatives of nine parties, its centralization is not as strong as those factions formed on the basis of one party. That is why the Our Ukraine faction will always remain very shaky in its political positions.
On the eve of the presidential elections, everybody is concerned about what Ukraine will be after them, for example, if Yanukovych should take office?
O. D. Yanukovych is quite a moderate person. But in his milieu there are several flaming Ukrainophobes, who hate the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian statehood. If Yanukovych takes office, they will have a chance to take public revenge. This could be ideological and economic revenge, as some people in his inner circle want a new re-distribution of property. In the end, everything will depend on Yanukovych’s ability to curb the radicals in his entourage.
What about Tymoshenko’s milieu?
O. D. Besides people neutral to any ideology, there are people in her entourage that have purely business interests and there are some that are ideologically gung ho. On the one hand, they are exploited to create a more positive image of Tymoshenko in the Ukrainian cultural environment. On the other hand, they create the Ukrainian cultural principles in Tymoshenko, which are certainly more pronounced than they are in Yanukovych.
In some circles, people now more often say that in the absence of a real choice, Yushchenko remains the lesser of all evils.
O. D. In my opinion, as a continuation of the presidential campaign Yushchenko could become the leader of national-democratic forces in the new parliament, which make up 5-7% of the house. In an optimal campaign, this figure could be as high as 10%. After that, Yushchenko could contend for certain posts such as VR speaker or premier. Lytvyn managed to convert even lower percentages to achieve a higher political result. But in general Yushchenko is always late in organizing the process. The last time (about a year ago) I tried to tell him that his chances of being re-elected are slim to none and that he should be prepared for defeat. This will not mean the end of his political career, though, and he can achieve a lot in the parliament. This incited in him a storm of negative emotions. Such conversations were no longer constructive or tolerant. It seems that today he began to realize this, but a lot of time has been lost.
Isn’t it time that we see some new faces in Ukrainian politics?
O. D. Perhaps. Twenty years ago we believed that we could change a lot of things for the better. This is why we entered into politics. Today people are going into politics for power and money. The lists are formed by party leaders, which the people have minimal influence over. Besides, in my opinion, society does not really want changes and does not want to change. Ukrainians are not ready to initiate changes from within themselves and this is precisely why we have no honest leaders. I started with myself, which is why I am more interested in culture. In my opinion, this is a longer, yet more effective mechanism.
Printable version
