UPDATE on my favorite ex-communists: the Ukrainians

I officially declare the coalition of democratic forces … in Ukraine’s parliament dissolved. This has been long expected, but for me it is extremely sad.   I would not call this a political apocalypse, though it is true that it is another challenge of democracy. I hope we can overcome it.

[Arseny Yatsenyuk, Speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament]

With that declaration last week, yet another Ukrainian government bit the dust; which is saying quite a lot given that I felt obliged to open my most recent update on the Ukrainians as follows:

…no American politician could have anticipated the obsession fractious Ukrainians evidently developed for elections after their split from the former Soviet Union. After all, Sunday’s national poll was the third in three years, which puts the Ukrainians on track to make the Italians’ promiscuous penchant for changing governments seem positively chaste.

[UPDATE on my favorite ex-communists: the Ukrainians, The iPINIONS Journal, October 2, 2007]

Nevertheless, there were great expectations last year that the gunshot re-marriage between President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the two leaders of Ukraine’s democratic forces, would last.

But I was more cynical. In fact, despite writing that “perhaps this third time will prove a charm,” I ended last year’s update as follows:

Chances are even better, however, that I’ll be writing a similar update a year from now after another round of elections are called to end yet another period of political deadlock.

And, sure enough, here I am.

It is noteworthy, however, that this third divorce was caused by far more than persistent irreconcilable differences between Yushchenko and Tymoshenko.

Because it was triggered by Tymoshenko’s refusal to stand by Yushchenko when he went out on a limb in June to support another ex-communist, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, in his failed attempt to oust Russian forces from his country.

Yushchenko claims that Tymoshenko not only betrayed him (and Ukraine’s democratic forces) but was actually plotting “a political and constitutional coup d’etat” by joining Viktor Yanukovych (right), the leader of Ukraine’s pro-Russian party, in accusing Georgia’s democratic forces of provoking the Russian invasion.

That was the last straw, which evidently forced Yushchenko to walk out on his coalition government with Tymoshenko. Now there’s every indication that, despite talk of a reconciliation, Yushchenko will be forced to call snap elections within weeks.

For her part, Tymoshenko insists that the marriage can still work:

I am sorry that the president behaves irresponsibly…. I am convinced that the work of the democratic coalition will be renewed.

Except that, with the Russians feeling so adventuresome these days, they might use this latest episode (which they could argue indicates that the Ukrainians have no ability to govern this former Soviet Republic) as an excuse to do in Ukraine what they did in Georgia … to protect ethnic Russians of course.

But even if the democratic forces come to their senses and renew their vows, chances are very good that I’ll be writing a similar update a year from now….

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