Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich increased pressure on Ukraine’s president on Wednesday, boycotting the campaign for a poll ordered by a leader aiming to restore his authority two-and-a-half years after the ”Orange Revolution”.
Pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko this week brought to a head months of confrontation with his prime minister over Ukraine’s future direction, dissolving the Parliament backing Yanukovich and calling a May 27 election.
Under Ukrainian law, the campaign opened on Wednesday. But Yanukovich, defeated by the president in 2004 after weeks of ”orange” protests, vowed he would have nothing to do with it until the Constitutional Court ruled on the presidential decree.
Hundreds of the prime minister’s supporters have taken to the streets, putting up tent cities on the main Independence Square and outside Parliament. But the numbers fall short of those that propelled Yushchenko to victory in 2004.
”Until the Constitutional Court examines this issue, we will engage in no preparations for any elections,” Yanukovich told ministers. ”Given that the country is in such a tense situation, we must ensure that state institutions function … and cut short any action, or indeed any talk, of an early election.”
The prime minister’s allies in Parliament have asked the court to rule on the decree’s legality. No ruling can be expected from the court for about a month.
Yushchenko has seen his authority and popularity, once regarded as assured due to his role in the revolution, fade. His declining fortunes have boosted Yanukovich, who has poached members from the president’s party and gained new supporters across the country with his no-nonsense attitude.
Analysts say Yushchenko, who hoped to modernise Ukraine’s economy and bring the country more in line with Western values, has acted to stop Yanukovich getting enough backers in Parliament to challenge the president’s power directly.
Yushchenko, disfigured by an attempt to poison him during the 2004 campaign, said he dissolved Parliament to ”preserve the state”.
Orange optimism fades
Many in the capital’s streets said they were tired of political fighting and wanted no rerun of the revolution.
”I think there will be elections because if they don’t happen, people will just start fighting. Someone has to give way, there has to be a compromise,” said Gennady, an IT specialist.
Yushchenko’s victory in 2004 had prompted hopes among liberals that Ukraine, a country of about 47-million people lying between Russia and the European Union, could join the European Union and Nato and see rising living standards.
But the president’s supporters were disillusioned by rows among ministers, his powers were cut by constitutional change and his personal ratings sank to single figures.
The country remains poor by European standards. Average monthly wages stand at about $150 — much less in the countryside.
Addressing Western ambassadors in Kiev, Yanukovich repeated a call for talks to end the stand-off. ”We should extend a hand to each other. We must look to the future, not return to the past and reopen old wounds,” he said. ”The question of an early election should be removed from the agenda. People do not want a new election. But we are not afraid of an election. We are certain of victory.”
Opinion polls suggest a new election may not significantly change the make-up of Parliament, with the prime minister’s Regions Party in the lead, followed by the bloc of opposition leader and former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. — Reuters