Early elections in Ukraine unlikely after court ruling

A ruling by Ukraine’s constitutional court on Thursday that the governing coalition had been formed in accordance with the law means it is unlikely President Viktor Yanukovych will call early parliamentary elections.

Although Mr. Yanukovych’s Party of the Regions is the largest party in the Verkhovna Rada, it does not enjoy a majority.  A coalition with the Communists and the Lytvyn Bloc which was formed after February’s presidential election still left Prime Minister Mykola Azarov several seats short of an overall majority.

Mr. Azarov was able to muster enough votes to be nominated as Prime Minister by wooing individual deputies from the opposition Bloc of Yulia Timoshenko and from the Our Ukraine party of former president Viktor Yushchenko.  However, Ukraine’s constitution states that formal coalitions can only be put together from whole factions in the Rada, rather than individual deputies.

Last month the Rada passed a law that allowed deputies to break away from their parliamentary faction and join a governing coalition.  This allowed Mr. Azarov to control 240 of the Rada’s 450 seats.  Opposition members argued that the measure was unconstitutional and that Mr. Azarov’s government had been illegally formed.

Mr. Yanukovych had said that if the constitutional court ruled against the government he would call snap parliamentary elections in a bid to secure a working majority.  This was a measure most parties were keen to avoid.  Any new election would likely produce a Rada little different from the present one.  Some analysts feared it would become more fractured, as former presidential contenders Sergey Tigipko and Arseniy Yatsenyuk were likely to run slates of candidates following strong showings in February’s election.  The ruling by the constitutional court means that the governing coalition will be able to continue in its present form and leaves open the possibility that the Rada will sit until its term expires in 2012.

The opposition leader Yulia Timoshenko has denounced the ruling as an illegal power grab has said that the democratic gains of the Orange Revolution are under threat.  International observers have little sympathy for Ms. Timoshenko’s protests, which are widely considered to be the complaints of a sore loser.  Ms. Timoshenko’s attempt to challenge the result of the presidential election was dismissed by the Central Election Commission as well as international election monitors.  Her complaints that Mr. Yanukovych threatens democracy is seen by some as ironic, given that she was widely suspected of playing to populist sentiments and displaying authoritarian tendencies during her campaign.

Although he was widely denounced in the aftermath of the Orange Revolution for alleged vote rigging, Mr. Yanukovych has enjoyed something of a honeymoon as president.  He has been warmly received in Moscow and Brussels and is to hold bilateral talks with US president Barack Obama at the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington next week.  At a meeting in the European Parliament on Wednesday, Mr. Yanukovych and MEPs stressed the need for a road map which would allow Ukrainian citizens visa-free travel to EU member states.  Mr. Yanukovych has also been in talks with the IMF about un-freezing a $16.4 billion aid package which was blocked for the duration of the presidential election.

Polish president killed in plane crash

The Polish president Lech Kaczynski has been killed in a plane crash along with his wife and other senior officials.  It has been reported that more than eighty people are dead.  The presidential group were on their way to a memorial service at Katyn, the scene of a massacre of 22,000 Polish officers in 1940.

Reports from Russia indicate that the pilot of the Polish aircraft ignored warnings to divert to an alternative landing point owing to heavy fog.  Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has pledged to take personal charge of an investigation into the cause of the crash.

President Lech Kaczynski came to power in Poland following the presidential election in 2005. As president, the constitution has always given him a stronger say over foreign policy than domestic policy.  His experience as a leader of the Solidarity movement and the fact his father fought in the Warsaw Uprising always gave him a strong sense of duty.  He saw his duty as a Polish patriot to protect Poland’s interests and prevent the return of Communist oppression or foreign occupation.

In President Kaczynski’s mind the greatest danger was the return of Soviet domination.  This explains why he protested so strongly against Russia’s return to being a great power.  He long feared his country ending up under the thumb of Moscow again.  His support for the Missile Defence Shield was also borne out by his understanding of history and his perception of Russian bullying.  Berlin has also been reminded by the late president of Poland’s interests in sometimes undiplomatic language, and again his blunt manner of speaking can only be understood by the psychological burden of history.

The late president had started to lose support domestically.  Observers believed his opponent in this year’s presidential election, the current Prime Minister Donald Tusk, was likely to win.  Mr. Kaczynski’s style of politics was losing appeal with the Polish electorate, especially a younger generation that has not known occupatoin and has enjoyed rights like freedom of movement and access to information that their parents did not enjoy.

Mr. Kaczynski was known and considered controversial in Britain for his social conservatism.  His Law and Justice party had been the subject of criticism by the Labour party for its perceived hostility to gay rights.  Domestically, Mr. Kaczynski was considered a hero and patriot by some for his robust stance against Communism.  Others found his demands for lustration and attempts to remove from office public officials suspected of involvement with the Communist regime illustrative of an attitude that looked backwards, rather then to the future.

Our thoughts and prayers are with families of the victims of the terrible crash.  It is sad that the death of a president and other officials would occur just at the moment when a form of historical reconciliation between Russia and Poland is in sight.  We must hope that a greater understanding between the great and weaker powers of Europe will come from this tragedy. It is telling that the words from the Kremlin have been sympathetic to the deep shock that many in Poland currently feel.

The symbolism of this tragedy cannot be ignored.  Although it is on a much smaller scale, the fact that so many of Poland’s ruling elite has been lost so close to the site of the Katyn massacres will not escape comment.  There will be conspiracy theorists out there blogging that it might not be an accident. It is important to note that it was not in anyone’s interest for the late president to be killed in such a way. It was certainly not in Russia’s interest, given that Moscow has started to develop a greater understanding with Poland in recent months.

Revolution in Kyrgyzstan

Any president of Kyrgyzstan would find it difficult to improve the lives of the population.  The country faces numerous social and economic challenges.  It is dependant on exports of energy and natural resources and has been hit hard by the global recession as remittances from Russia have dried up.  Its economic performance since independence has been the worst of all sixteen former Soviet republics except war-torn Armenia, Azerbaijan and Tajikistan.

Observers have been expecting unrest for some time.  At least 68 people died and more than 500 were wounded in yesterday’s riots when opposition supporters fought pitched battles with riot police in Bishkek.  The riots are said to have been triggered by increases in fuel prices, but people are also angry at corruption and the increasingly repressive measures taken by the authorities.

President Kurmanbek Bakiyev has reportedly fled the country and an interim government has been set up under Roza Otunbayeva, a former foreign minister turned opposition leader.  If the opposition does take power and Ms. Otunbayeva becomes president, she will need to address the deep seated resentment held by Kyrgyzstan’s population towards the establishment.

Questions need to be asked about whether a change in president will lead to an improvement in living standards.  A similar uprising in 2005 brought high hopes, but Mr. Bakiyev’s ousting four years later demonstrates that a façade democracy was simply replaced by another façade democracy.

There remains the possibility of outside intervention, but as the immediate situation has stabilised this now appears unlikely.  There has been speculation that either Russia or the United States are responsible for orchestrating the violence, but there is no evidence of this and such action would not be in the interests of the two great powers.  Manas airport, close to the Kazakh border, is a vital re-supply point for NATO troops in Afghanistan.  The base was temporary closed yesterday.

One of this article’s authors was in Chişinău last year during the riots that followed April elections in Moldova.  The unrest is similar in the sense that there is a great deal of looting and violence being carried out in the name of democracy.  Correspondence sent to us from Bishkek express concern about safety in the capital.

The new interior minister has said his first priority will be to punish the previous rulers for their corruption.  Another member for the interim regime has said he intends to publish a list of all officials “who have exploited Kyrgyzstan within the last twenty years.  Azimbek Bekhnazarov, a former parliamentarian and district prosecutor, said: “We need to punish them.  We need to find their wealth even from their deep hiding places under the earth.  We need to return the people’s wealth to the people”.

This suggests that, far from a bright democratic future, yesterday’s events in Kyrgyzstan are likely to bring another period of reprisals and a redistribution of the country’s assets.  This does not bode well for future stability.

Putin’s Katyn gesture brings hope of reconciliation

Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Poland’s Donald Tusk today marked the seventieth anniversary of the Katyn massacre in a ceremony whose significance is more likely to be political than historic.

Prime Minister Putin’s announcement in early 2010 that he would invite his Polish counter-part to a memorial service for Katyn victims is the latest step in a “historical thaw” between Russia and Poland that commenced last September, when Mr. Putin denounced the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact as “immoral” and “unacceptable”.

Over 22,000 Polish officers were executed by the Soviet NKVD near the villages of Katyn and Gnezdovo, close to Smolensk, in 1940.  Their graves were discovered by Nazi Germany in 1943, although the Soviet Union continued to deny responsibility for the massacre until 1990, when Mikhail Gorbachev and later Boris Yeltsin acknowledged that the killings had been carried out by the NKVD.  Classified documents about the massacres were handed over to the Lech Walesa government by Boris Yeltsin in 1992.

Today’s memorial service is not the first to be held on Russian soil.  In 1989 a service of commemoration organised by a Polish victims’ association was attended by former US national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, and on the forty seventh anniversary of the discovery of the graves, the Supreme Soviet passed a resolution expressing its “profound regret” for the crime.

Contrary to popular opinion, “Katyn denial” is not widespread amongst the Russian elite.  A few writers and Duma deputies on the fringe of nationalist politics have occasionally suggested that the original Soviet lie – that the Polish officers were killed by the Germans in 1941 – is the correct version of history. But this view is not shared by most Russians, nor is it commonly expressed in the Russian media or held by the leadership of the country.  Neither is Katyn denial exclusive to Russia.  Theories that the massacres were the result of co-ordinated action between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union are aired on Polish media from time to time.

Katyn still remains a diplomatic stumbling block between Poland and Russia.  For several years Poland has pressed for the Katyn massacre to be recognised as genocide.  This label is refuted by Russia, which retains the status of legal successor to the Soviet Union.  The Russian prosecutor general’s ruling that there is no further legal basis for judicial action against the perpetrators of the killings has riled Poland, as has the refusal of the Russian government to completely declassify their archives.

Last week, Polish director Andrzej Wajda’s Oscar nominated “Katyn” was shown on Russian state television, apparently after the personal intervention of Mr. Putin.  The film was followed by a lengthy interview with the director and a discussion with United Russia deputy and chairman of the State Duma’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Konstantin Kosachev, who praised Mr. Wajda for his work and its “anti-Stalinist” and “anti-totalitarian” message.

At a time when Russia is being criticised for historical revisionism and the rehabilitation of Stalin, Mr. Putin’s words at today’s service are particularly poignant, and leave the listener in no doubt about his stated intention to resolve the difficult legacy of Stalinist cruelty and repression in Eastern Europe.

“Here lie Soviet citizens burnt in the fires of Stalin’s repressions in the 1930s, Polish officers shot by secret order and soldiers of the Red Army executed by the Nazis during World War 2.  Katyn has inextricably linked their destinies…

Stalinist repression swept people away regardless of their ethnic origin, convictions or religious beliefs.  Whole social lasses became victims – Cossacks, clergymen, ordinary peasants, professors, officers, some of whom served in the Tsarist army and then came to serve the Soviet state… The logic was simple: to sow fear, to awaken people’s basest instincts, to turn them against each other and to make them obey blindly and unthinkingly.

There is no justification for these crimes.  In our country, we have passed a clear political, legal and moral verdict on the atrocities of that totalitarian regime.  And this verdict cannot be revised.

For decades, there were attempts to conceal the truth about the Katyn massacre with cynical lies.  But to lay the blame for these crimes on the Russian people would be the same sort of lies and manipulation.”