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Ukraine adopts political changes, defusing crisis
By Steven Lee Myers The New York Times Thursday, December 9, 2004
KIEV President Leonid Kuchma and Ukraine's Parliament on Wednesday adopted an overhaul of the country's political system, defusing a bitter political crisis that erupted after last month's discredited vote for Kuchma's successor.
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The agreement, which amended the Constitution and refined election laws intended to prevent a repeat of widespread fraud that marred the Nov. 21 vote, smoothed the way for a new presidential runoff on Dec. 26 between Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich and Viktor Yushchenko, the opposition leader. It also meant, however, that the winner of that race will inherit fewer powers than those Kuchma wielded during his decade in office. Yanukovich, who has started criticizing Kuchma, the man who positioned him as his chosen successor, denounced the pact as a coup.
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Yushchenko, whose accusations that Kuchma's government stole his rightful victory led to widespread protests, called Wednesday "a day of historic compromise" that would ultimately lead to his victory in the new vote.
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Yushchenko, who had rallied hundreds of thousands of protesters in Kiev and other cities, urged them to go home Wednesday, ending their blockades in Kiev's Independence Square and around government buildings to begin preparations for a new, abbreviated campaign.
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Pora, the youth group that had organized thousands of students, called on its followers to return to classes and to winter exams.
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Ukraine's electoral crisis - which roiled the country and its economy, raised the specter of a territorial split and soured relations between Russia and the West - has in the end resulted not only in an unprecedented third round of voting, but also a new form of government.
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Kuchma and the opposition supported the changes, though with different motives, arguing that they would bring the country's governance closer to a European model of parliamentary democracy.
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The Parliament's speaker, Volodymyr Lytvyn, called Wednesday's vote "an act of consolidation and reconciliation" that had united Ukraine after more than two weeks of upheaval that at times threatened to turn violent.
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Yushchenko's "orange revolution" - so named after his campaign color - succeeded in isolating Kuchma and, ultimately, overturning the results of an election criticized here and abroad as rigged. Still, the biggest winner, according to lawmakers and political analysts, appeared to be Kuchma himself.
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Although manifestly unpopular, tainted by scandal and corruption and weakened by a popular uprising that refused to accept Yanukovich's declared victory as legitimate, Kuchma managed to preserve significant political influence in what will become a newly empowered Parliament, where his supporters nearly control a majority.
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That may well protect him from efforts by his fiercest critics to seek criminal charges stemming from his decade in power, including the murder of a journalist in 2000.
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Kuchma made a relatively rare appearance at Parliament, known as the Supreme Rada, only moments before deputies voted on the package of legislative changes.
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"Ukraine has more than once suffered through crisis," he told them in remarks broadcast on television. "But there was always enough common sense to find a way out."
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The vote, in the end, was overwhelming, with 402 deputies voting in favor and only 21 against, most of them from the bloc lead by one of Yushchenko's closest and most fiery allies, Yulia Tymoshenko. After the vote, Kuchma immediately signed the bill in the Supreme Rada's chambers.
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Tymoshenko, who appeared often beside Yushchenko at the demonstrations, criticized the vote as a victory for Kuchma that would weaken the powers that Yushchenko, in his supporters' view, deserved. "We could have won without it," she said, referring to the political reform.
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Wednesday's vote came after a flurry of negotiations that took place largely out of public view. Those talks involved aides to Kuchma and Yushchenko, but not, evidently, Yanukovich, the man initially declared the winner of the Nov. 21 runoff.
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Appearing in Donestk, the eastern city in the heart of his electoral base, Yanukovich sharply criticized the vote and, by inference Kuchma, who earlier in the week he denounced as "the old power." Yanukovich has resisted calls to withdraw from the race - even some from Kuchma - and vowed to win the new runoff.
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"Chaos reigns," Yanukovich said, according to the Interfax news agency, "and decisions are only taken by force."
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Wednesday's vote would amend the Constitution of 1996 to transfer some powers of the presidency to the Parliament, including the appointment of the cabinet of ministers who oversee the government.
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The president will still appoint the prime minister, but only after consultations with the Parliament's majority, essentially giving deputies the right to choose the head of government. The Parliament also gained power to appoint officials at the anti-monopoly commission, the property fund, the security services and the state television and radio system.
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The new president would have the power to dismiss the prime minister and his government, but in limited instances. The president will also appoint the defense and foreign ministers.
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Yushchenko's side won changes in election laws and the appointment of new members of the Central Election Commission, which voted on Nov. 24 to declare Yanukovich the victor despite the evidence of manipulation and other electoral violations. After the main vote, deputies voted on new members. The commission's chairman, Serhiy Kivalov, was ousted, as Yushchenko's supporters chanted, "Shame!"
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Kuchma also agreed to an opposition demand and accepted the resignation of the prosecutor general, Gennady Vasiliyev, whom the opposition accused of failing to investigate the violations seen in both rounds of the elections.
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On Independence Square, the mood was hardly celebratory. The crowds that once thronged the area have diminished markedly since Friday, when the Supreme Court overturned the election results and ordered a new runoff.
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"It is not the victory they thought about and hoped for," Yulia Tishchenko, a political analyst at the Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research, said of the protesters in an interview.
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"It is a compromise and these compromises are not well articulated and understood. Nobody on the square was ever demanding political reform," she said.
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One of them, Anatoly Ostralutsky, a city worker and union leader, said the Constitutional changes were overdue, even if it meant Yushchenko would have "a little bit less" power than Kuchma.
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It was a victory nevertheless, he said, for the people who surged into the streets, peacefully, to block Kuchma's efforts to rig the election of his successor.
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"It was a victory of the people," he said, "without a single shot fired."
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