Monday, March 27, 2006

Ukraine's Elections

I have been patiently waiting to see if A Fistful of Euros was going to cover the Ukrainian elections. I have been more than a little preoccupied with other events in life and some of our sources of dried up a bit due to the fact they are just struggling to survive. With Ukraine so actively courting the EU, it would seem to be rather important to the Unioners, but, perhaps not.

That said, what happened? Yuschenko didn't do enough, fast enough. We're actually getting to see democracy in action. Unfortunately, it's just a case of the election coming too soon: it's often true that bad times cannot be simply be put away in a year. Economies are complex creatures and when inheriting something as disfunctional as Ukraine's , there is bound to be a time period of Very Bad Times before it gets better. That said, it doesn't mean that Yushenko necessarily went down and did the right stuff or did more than paper over the mistakes of the past or do more than nominally pursue some of the goals that he stated were oh-so-important.

A good example is the corruption epidemic. It goes beyond a disease in Ukraine. It's so bad that you can't conduct even a small business without it. To so permeates the police, frex, that money is the only truth there and Soviet style, self-deceiving truth seems to be the definite case. Yuschenko promised to stomp it all out. He got off to a greast start. Lyuda at one time worked for the police and she said that a lot of her old friends, as odd as that may seem, quit their jobs and essentially hid because the authorities from on high were coming to clean out every single temple. However, right now, it seems that authorities simply walked through and all those oh-so-squeeky clean friends are back at their jobs, doing the same old, same old...but at higher prices...because there is a risk now of getting caughta nd made an example of. A very small one.

Perhaps if El Presidente Ukraine might have follwoed through there and a few other places things would have gotten better and he'd not have been so humiliated at the polls. It looks like Yanakovich is going to win about 30% - 33% of the Rada. That's 150 seats. It looks like Timoshenko's faction is going to get 24% of the vote. Alas for poor Yuschenko he's going to end up with 16% backing his party. The next biggest group was the socialists and after them came the communists. They were Yuschenko allies and Yanakovich allies respectively.

Interestingly, both Timoshenko and Yanakovich are seeking to court Yuschenko for forming a government. T is being her ole self and unless she holds her fracking tongue might miss the chance to be the Prime Minister again. Y is being very sly and the bastard has figured out Parliamentry politicing PDQ...esp for someone taht tried to steal the election last time. Very interesting and scary.

But what does it mean?

If T+Y happens, then things might remain the same as far as reforms go except T has a overly itchy nationalization twitch that she has just gotta scratch which might mean certain things get taken away, ahem, nationalized. If Y+Y happens, the internal reforms are going to slow down. Considerably. Don't expect any more sales of assets or privatizations until the next election. It's always possible that a government won't be formed and new elections will have to be called. that's a wild card as to the outcome then because it all depends on the spin each side does. personally, I think that Timoshenko and Yanakovich are the winners then, not the president because they can paint his party as the bad guys[1].

However, in either case of the first two cases, the foreign policy of Ukraine isn't going to change much. Ukraine will march slowly towards the West. At least until the next presidential election. The president appoints the foreign and defense ministers and has complete control of foreign policy. He still needs a budget, to be sure, but he's still not in a horrible position, just a not good one.

As to what happens after this...well...we'll see.


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