Arsenyi Yatsenyuk: Rebel without a Cause

Graham Stack for Russia Profile (www.russiaprofile.org)

Ukraine’s youthful Presidential Candidate Arseny Yatsenyuk is tailor-made to be a pro-Western leader, but his stagnating ratings show how weak this political constituency has become in Ukraine. Instead, all three leading contenders in the presidential election campaign that kicked off this week are making pro-Russian statements.

History repeats itself as farce, Karl Marx apparently said. The Ukrainian presidential hopeful, 35-year-old Arseny Yatsenyuk’s great historical moment may have come and gone on June 7, 2009. During a week boiling with rumors it seemed that the two largest parties in Ukraine’s unicameral parliament, the Rada, were preparing a grand coalition to achieve a constitutional majority and transform Ukraine into a parliamentary republic, abolishing direct presidential elections. The trigger: Yatsenyuk’s meteoric rise in opinion polls, from zero to over ten percent in the course of months. Extrapolating, neither leader of the two largest parliamentary parties, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc or the former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych of the Party of Regions, could be sure of winning the presidential elections  January 2010. So they had apparently simply decided to call off the elections altogether, and divvy up power between them.

Yatsenyuk sprang into action. Talking to this correspondent, he called on the West to beware of the imminent creation of a Russian-backed “junta.” “If the coalition’s plans go ahead, Ukraine will return to the sphere of influence of a certain big country,” he warned, “and Ukraine will turn into a banana republic.” Calling the nascent coalition’s plans “an anti-constitutional conspiracy,” he said he would lead people out on the streets to fight them. Asked if there would be a second Orange Revolution, Yatsenyuk replied “you will see it.”

By Sunday, June 7, however, it was all over. The “putsch attempt” has been debunked as just another Ukrainian political stunt. Viktor Yanukovych suddenly backed out of the negotiations, saying that he was alarmed by the anti-democratic nature of Tymoshenko’s suggestions. The episode left Yanukovych looking wily, and even a little democratic, Tymoshenko looking like she would stop at nothing to stay in power, and Yatsenyuk like a callow wannabe popular hero.

Yatsenyuk, with his perfect English, baby-face looks, superb credentials and squeaky clean image, is tailor-made to fit the role of a “pro-Western democratic candidate.” But it is a sign of the times that there is no demand for such in Ukraine today, making Yatsenyuk seem like a rebel without a cause.

From Ukraine’s Obama to Ukraine’s Medvedev

Launching his unofficial campaign in late 2008, Yatsenyuk tried to tap into the buzz surrounding the new U.S. President Barack Obama. The media picked up the “Ukraine’s Obama” jingle, and Yatsenyuk’s spinmeisters playfully disclaimed it, pointing out “significant differences:” “Obama uses a Blackberry, but Arseny prefers an iPhone.”

This strategy paid off in the first half of 2009, as Yatsenyuk’s ratings rose meteorically to around 13 percent, fractionally behind prime minister Tymoshenko. Yatsenyuk’s advance, however, was at the expense of democratic President Viktor Yushchenko, as he was winning over the latter’s residual pro-Orange constituency. As a result, Yushchenko’s own rating fell below the margin of error, with Gallup declaring him to be the most unpopular president in the history of polling. Conversely, as Yushchenko’s rating tended to zero, Yatsenyuk hit his ceiling of around 13 percent, which was still less than Tymoshenko at around 15%, and way behind Yanukovych’s mid 20s.

Realizing that the post-Orange constituency was too small to get in the second round of the elections, let alone win it, Yatsenyuk was forced to change his tune and follow in Tymoshenko’s footsteps. The latter, formerly an iconic figure of the Orange Revolution, had already jettisoned her Orange ballast in 2008. In the course of months in 2008, she spectacularly morphed from an anti-Russian, pro-NATO firebrand into a moderately pro-Russian politician. By September she was  under investigation by the Ukrainian Security Service for acting against Ukraine’s national interest for the benefit of Russia. Not least, she refused to support Georgia in the August 2008 war with Russia over South Ossetia.

To compete with Tymoshenko, Yatsenyuk then likewise discarded the “Ukraine’s Obama” mask. Instead, he donned what Andrew Wilson of the European Council of Foreign Relations called the image of “Putin-lite,” to capitalize on the Russian prime minister’s sky-high approval ratings in Ukraine. Instead of railing Orange-style against juntas and authoritarianism, Yatsenyuk switched to declaring war on corruption, using hard-man talk of filling the jails and cutting off hands. He also showed himself happy to speak Russian in public, supported the Russian stance over gas transport, and praised Putin as “having saved his country.” “Putin-lite” is also reminiscent of Dmitry Medvedev, who enjoys a high level of approval in Ukraine, has declared war on corruption, is young and has a background in law, like Yatsenyuk.

But Yatsenyuk is not the only one trying to tap into the buzz surrounding Putin and Medvedev. The polls’ frontrunner, Viktor Yanukovych, has the best pro-Russian credentials, although he is hardly a Putinesque figure. Yulia Tymoshenko can match Putin for charisma, and has been hard at it, with Putin/Medvedev-like phrases, such as “dictatorship of the law” and “legal nihilism” tripping off her tongue, along with Putin-style promises to restore Ukraine’s Soviet-era high-tech aerospace and ship-building sectors. Tymoshenko’s enthusiasm for Putin apparently even caused the latter to postpone a meeting with her in October, lest it seem he was favouring her in the elections.

This means that switching to “Ukraine’s Medvedev” has not brought Yatsenyuk the anticipated breakthrough in the polls. The latest ratings have seen him fall back to around ten percent, and his chances of getting into the second round of elections ahead of Tymoshenko are fading. Meanwhile, Yanukovych is for the first time looking likely to beat Tymoshenko in a second round run-off.

But the remarkable result of Yatsenyuk’s switch to “Putin-lite” is that the leading three candidates in Ukraine’s crucial presidential elections are now all actively campaigning on their lack of hostility toward Russia, and their current order in the ratings corresponds to the respective plausibility of this platform

Moldova’s turncoat president?

Graham Stack in Kyiv for business new europe (www.businessneweurope.eu)

 

Marian Lupu is the man widely tipped to become Moldova’s next president – but not, as expected, the Communist Party successor to incumbent President Vladimir Voronin. Instead he looks set to be the winning candidate from the opposition coalition.

Moldova’s president, like in some other CEE countries, is elected by the parliament. Lupu, since 2005 the telegenic speaker of Moldova’s single-chamber parliament and a member of the Communist Party, had long been the favourite to succeed President Voronin via being elected by a Communist majority in parliament. And following violent post-parliamentary election protests at the Communist victory on April 7 that wrecked the parliament he presided over, Lupu erupted in front of state TV cameras. “This was not vandalism, this was… an attempted coup d’etat,” he spluttered. “What happened in this building wasn’t just chaos, those were actions well-thought in advance.”

After towing the party line in such a way, Lupu, “young, apparently loyal to Voronin and a disciplined member of the Communist Party,” according to Chisinau think-tank Viitorul’s Igor Munteanu, seemed all the more likely to get the nod. But Voronin surprisingly plumped for the more pliable Prime Minister Zinaida Grechanaya as the party’s presidential candidate in the parliamentary votes held in May and June. This proved to be a terrible decision – with 61 votes out of 101 in parliament needed to elect the president outright, the Communist Party, with just 60 seats, failed to win over a single opposition vote in the two rounds of voting, forcing Voronin to call new general elections for July 29.

Lupu’s revenge for being snubbed came on June 10 when, following the second parliamentary vote, he dropped the bombshell that he was quitting the Communist Party for the small centre-left Democratic Party, citing the authoritarian and reactionary structure of the Communist Party.

This shift proved to be fatal to Voronin’s hold on power. Campaigning with the slogan “Lupu for President,” the Democratic Party took 13 seats in July’s snap elections, whereas in April the party hadn’t even overcome the 6% threshold to enter parliament. The swing voters seem to have come wholly from the Communist camp – the Communists won 12 seats less than in April, ending up with only 48, meaning they now have no chance of electing their own candidate as president.

With the announcement on August 8 that Moldova’s four opposition leaders – Mihai Ghimpu, Serafim Urechean, Vlad Filat and Marian Lupu – were forming an Alliance for European Integration, which has 53 MPs in the 101-seat parliament – enough to form a government, but too few to vote through their choice of president – Lupu will reportedly be the man the opposition puts up to be president. However, with one of the leaders of the Communist party, Vladimir Ţurcan, in mid-August calling Lupu a “traitor,” Lupu is unlikely to be backed by his former party and so the political crisis in country appears likely to continue for several months more.

Lupu lazuli

For so long regarded as the likely successor to Voronin as Communist Party president, and now the hot favourite as opposition-backed president, there’s much head scratching about what he actually stands for? “Lupu’s quitting the Communist Party was the most radical decision Moldovans have seen from him. Risk-averse best decribes Lupu,” says independent political analyst Ion Marandici.

As parliamentary speaker for the last five years, Lupu had little direct policy input. However, he is associated with the reform wing of the party that backed investment-friendly measures such as a zero-rate corporate tax introduced in 2008. In fact, despite the name, Voronin’s Communist Party has been largely reformist in the economic sphere, with a longstanding commitment to joining the EU. However, opponents accuse Voronin of simply pursuing his own business interests under the guise of liberalization.

Before joining the Communist Party and becoming speaker of parliament in 2005, Lupu’s entire career had been in the Ministry of Economy and Reforms, achieving senior positions at an early age. He started at the ministry in 1991, after completing a PhD in Moscow. By 1997, at the tender age of 31, he had risen to become head of the foreign trade department in 1997. In this capacity, he directed Moldova’s negotiations on joining the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Moldova’s accession to the WTO in 2001, beating Ukraine and Russia by almost a decade, is thus the biggest feather in Lupu’s cap to date, and the achievement has lent impetus to the country’s ongoing integration with Europe. Simultaneously to WTO accession, Moldova pursued an ambitious energy privatization programme, selling off its power generation assets in 2001 to Spanish group Union Fenosa for cash and $55m investment commitments over five years.

As a result of Lupu’s success with the WTO, he was promoted to vice economy minister in 2001, and then to economy minister in 2003. In this capacity, he strove with limited success to reduce the red tape that strangles the Moldovan economy. “Lupu was never a Balcerowicz or Chubais,” says Nicu Popescu, senior analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations, referring to Polish and Russian reformers. “Critics say he failed to push through a reformist agenda while in the Communist Party. But he was one of the most successful technocrats and has a strong international background.”

With the current economic downturn hitting Moldova hard – a 13% GDP drop is on the cards for 2009 – Lupu’s experience in working with international financial institutes and organizations could prove a crucial resource. Lupu is fluent in English and French, and has trained in New York and Geneva. His ability to work with Russia is also an advantage: Lupu lived and studied in Moscow during the heady days of Perestroika in 1987-1991. “Lupu, if he becomes president, will offer a very different style to Voronin, but allow for policy continuity,” reckons Popescu. “Most importantly, he will be more in touch with international opinion than Voronin.”

Gongadze murderer could cause political earthquake in Ukraine

Graham Stack in Kiev

Ukraine’s Security Service deputy head Vasyl Hrytsak told a briefing that Oleksy Pukach, arrested July 21 for the murder of journalist Heorhiy Gongadze in 2000, has named the people who ordered the crime.

“[Oleksiy] Pukach has confirmed his complicity in that crime. He has also confirmed the complicity of individual officials – there will be a lot of interesting information,” Hrytsak said, according to Interfax.

President Viktor Yushchenko also said that “the public would learn very interesting things” following Pukach’s detainment.

Opponents have called the timing of the move to detain Pukach political. It turned out that Pukach had been living in a village near Kiev since 2005, and under secret service surveillance.

Gongadze, a fierce critic of former President Leonid Kuchma, disappeared in September 2000, and his headless corpse was found soon after. Tape recordings of conversations between Leonid Kuchma and top officials, including current parliamentary speaker Vladimir Litvin who met with US VP Joe Biden yesterday, indicated Kuchma’s displeasure with the journalist. Kuchma appeared to recommend Gongadze be “turned over to the Chechens.” The authenticity of the tapes, leaked by former head of Kuchma’s security detail Melnikov, has never been proven.

Gongadze’s murder and subsequent revelations played a key role in the development of democratic opposition to Kuchma, culminating in the Orange Revolution 2004.

Three former police officers have since been sentenced to 12 year prison sentences for the murders. They said they were operating under Pukach’s orders. Pukach went into hiding in 2005.

Don’t trust Twitter, Moldovan activist warns Iranians

25 year old Moldovan activist Natalia Morar, who helped trigger Moldova’s post-election protests in April labeled by media the first ‘Twitter Revolution’, has warned Iranian protestors not to trust the Twitter internet service.
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“This new technology has great positive potential,” Morar said in Chisinau, capital of small ex-Soviet republic Moldova. “But it has equally great danger because of its anonymity and speed. It is too easy to manipulate. Government provocateurs can use it for their own bad purposes.”

“The problem is not only the possibility of government manipulation,” says Morar, “but also that you cannot control what you have started. Things can escalate too easy.”

Morar is now facing a 8-15 year jail sentence on charges of inciting mass disturbances, after Moldova’s ‘Twitter Revolution’ exploded into violence April 7. Morar and her Hyde Park group used Internet and twitter to launch peaceful protests against apparently rigged elections April 5. But on the second day of the protests in Chisinau, stone-throwing youths swept police aside to set the parliamentary building on fire. Morar says she had no connection to the violence.

The Moldovan government ruthlessly exploited TV footage of the mayhem and destruction to smear the opposition as a whole. Morar, and many others in the opposition, allege that government provocateurs mingled in the crowd and acted as ringleaders among the violent minority, while also agitating in cyberspace.

Morar says she and her fellow activists watched the Iranian events unfold with a mixture of joy and trepidation. She says the Moldovan authorities are also nervous about events in Iran. “When protests broke out in Iran, Twitter.com was inaccessible for a while in Moldova.”

Morar is critical of Western media for hyping an unreliable medium like Twitter. “Social networking sites, email, mobile phones are all less anonymous, so more reliable, and were in fact much more important than Twitter in Moldova. But they are less accessible to Western media following events. My fear is that the Iranians will trust Twitter too much.”

West should beware “junta” coalition, says Yatsenyuk

Graham Stack in Kiev

With a grand coalition in Ukraine’s parliament looking set to cancel upcoming direct presidential elections and change the constitution, Arsenyi Yatsenyuk, dubbed Ukraine’s Obama, and one of the favourites to win the elections, has warned the West of a Russian-backed “junta” that could turn Ukraine into “a banana republic.”

“I know the West is exhausted of the stand-off in Ukraine,” 35 year old Arsenyi Yatsenyuk, parliamentary deputy and leader of Ukraine’s “Front for Change”, told this correspondent in perfect English, ”but this is very dangerous. Because if the coalition’s plans go ahead, Ukraine will return to the sphere of influence of a certain big country,” he added, leaving no doubt he had Russia in mind. “It will also turn Ukraine into a banana republic,” he added.

Yatsenyuk called the nascent coalition’s plans to cancel presidential elections and shift power to the parliament “an anti-constitutional conspiracy,” and promised to head a campaign to stop what he referred to as a “junta”.

Asked if there would be a second Orange revolution, Yatsenyuk said, “you will see.”

The two parties which are negotiating the coalition, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s Bloc Yulia Tymoshenko and opposition leader Viktor Yanukovch’s Party of Regions, together command 70% of the parliament, meaning the coalition will monopolise power in the country if comes to fruition, as it is expected to within this week.

Currently, presidential elections are scheduled for January 2010. The nascent coalition and its plans to abolish presidential elections are expected to be formally announced coming Tuesday.

Analysts agree that the move would condemn Ukraine to follow Russia and Belarus along the path to authoritarianism, by sidelining opposition and restricting political participation.

Until Yatsenyuk threw his hat into the ring, the presidential elections were seen as a two horse race between Yanukovych and Tymoshenko. Incumbent president Viktor Yushchenko, although also intending to run, has poll ratings of 2%, making him a marginal candidate.

Yatsenyuk’s rating has already reached 14% and is rising monthly. PM Tymoshenko is on 15% and opposition leader Yanukovych on 25%.

Yatsenyuk’s campaign team have no doubt that his rapid rise has prompted the move to cancel elections, with both Tymoshenko and Yanukovych now uncertain of their chances in the winner-takes-all presidential race. Yatsenyuk declared his candidacy on May 22 on turning thirty five, the minimal age for a presidential candidacy.

Former PM Yanukovych and current PM Tymoshenko were on opposing sides during the globally-acclaimed 2004 Orange revolution. It was largely Tymoshenko’s firebrand rhetoric and actions that stymied Yanukovych’s attempt to rig the elections in his favour. Now they appear to be divvying up power between them to keep Yatsenyuk out. Reports indicate Yanukovych will have himself elected president by parliament, in return for Tymoshenko continuing as prime minister.

Yanukovch openly favours a pro-Russian Ukraine. Tymoshenko, formerly vehemently pro-Western, has shifted radically to a pro-Russian position since the Russian-Georgian conflict of August 2008, prompting Ukraine’s secret service to investigate her for betraying the national interest.

Yatsenyuk’s soaring popularity in Ukraine has led to him being dubbed the Ukrainian Obama. Like Obama, he is a legal scholar by profession, with a background in civil activism. Despite his youth he has held high office in Ukraine as Minister of Economy, Foreign Minister and Parliamentary speaker. He has however avoided being mired in political sleaze and backstabbing that has dogged the country.

His campaign is also modeled on Obama’s success in 2008, with its slogan of ‘change’, and reliance on grassroots activism and also financial support from the pockets of ordinary people donating via the Internet.

His campaign team, however, playfully disclaim any such parallel, saying there are significant differences between the two young politicians. “Obama uses a blackberry, while Yatsenyuk prefers an i-phone’ a source close to Yatsenyuk joked.

–

Oops she did it again

Graham Stack in Chisinau  for business new europe (www.businessneweurope.eu)

Oddly for someone thrown out of mighty Russia on charges of being a threat to state security and planning the violent overthrow of the government, 25-year-old journalist Natalia Morar looks as if sugar wouldn’t melt in her mouth. And for someone facing up to eight years in jail on charges of inciting mass riots, she seems remarkably bright and fresh – and as surprised as anyone about the scale of the protests that followed Moldova’s parliamentary elections on April 5.

Morar’s current problems all started the morning after Moldova’s elections. She and six like-minded friends from their informal pro-democracy group Hyde Park met at a café for a brainstorming session on what to do about the seemingly rigged elections. President Vladimir Voronin’s ruling Communist Party had got precisely the right number of seats in parliament to allow them to name the next president without having to talk to the opposition parties. Voronin himself must stand down after two terms in office, and has openly said he would seek a Den Xiaoping status for himself, referring to the late Chinese leader who never held office as the head of state or head of government, but served as the de facto leader of China for almost 20 years.

The elections results were just too neat to be true, Morar and her friends thought, although the Organisation for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE) had largely given the vote a clean bill of health. But on the internet, rumours abounded of voting lists packed with the names of dead souls and emigrant workers.

Morar’s friends decided to organize a flash mob for that evening to take place using Twitter, Facebook and the Russian social network site Odnoklassniki, plus good old-fashioned sms. They counted on getting together a crowd of a several hundred at the most, Morar told bne at a secret location in Chishinau. Instead of the hundreds they expected, tens of thousands turned out – estimates range from 10,000-20,000. Moreover they returned the next day as well.

The crowd was initially peaceful, but very suddenly on the Tuesday after midday, the mood turned ugly. Stones rained down on the under-equipped and undermanned police. Protestors burst through the police cordon into the parliament building and presidential office. Fire broke out in the left wing of the parliament, and protestors defenestrated computers and files. “The violence had nothing to do with us,” explains Morar. “At that time, we together with the political opposition leaders had called on the crowd in front of the parliament to disperse and join the official demonstration in front of the government building.”

Conspiracy or cock up?

The outbreak of violence was so unexpected and unusual for Moldova that it has given rise to a host of conspiracy theories. According to Morar and other opposition activists, there were police provocateurs among the crowd, who incited and organized the violence with the aim of discrediting the democratic opposition. Many neutral observers also report that there emerged unidentified micro-leaders in the crowd giving instructions how to act.

The Voronin administration has its competing conspiracy theory: that the protests were engineered by Romanian agents with the aim of destabilizing Moldova and initiating reunification of the two countries. The government points to the fact that the protestors hung out a flag of Greater Romania on the parliament, which, it should be noted, encompasses not only Moldava, referred to by Romanians as Bessarabia, but also Ukraine’s Bukovina region around Czernowitz, which belonged to Romania before the war.

The Kremlin also has its conspiracy theory: that it was an attempt at a US-inspired “coloured revolution”, with Morar and Hyde Park playing the role of youth organizations like Ukraine’s Pora and Serbia Upor.

However, while it is perfectly possible that all three conspiracy theories have an element of truth, taken on balance, the cock-up theory is preferable.

The first major cock-up related to Moldova’s non-existent crowd policing. Before the violence started, observers report that protecting the parliament building from tens of thousands of demonstrators stood a thin blue line of sometimes not more than 10 local bobbies. This can be attributed to surprise at the numbers, but is also a result of the extremely negative international media response to police violence against demonstrators in Russia and Georgia in 2007-2008. In Tbilisi in April, there was a minimal police presence despite 50,000 demonstrators turning out.

Additionally, Moldova, Europe’s poorest country with no recent history of mass protests, seems simply to lack any trained and properly equipped riot police, just as it lacks tanks, luckily. Even after the protests turned violent and stones started to rain down on the police, reinforcements wore helmets mostly lacking visors, and carried non-transparent steel shields, greatly limiting their ability to defend themselves. This turned policemen into sitting ducks for stone throwers. Policemen were seen reduced to tears by the assault, where they weren’t masked in blood. Many simply ceased to offer resistance.

This also does not seem to have been feigned weakness to provoke an attack. This correspondent’s room in Chisinau looked directly on to the courtyard of the Interior Ministry, where in the days following the protests, hasty but fairly desultory attempts to train police on how to use seemingly new plexiglass riot shields could be seen.

The second major cock-up relates to the crowd. Activating young people via Internet and sms does not necessarily mean getting a crowd of peace-loving democratic Euro-youth together, as activists such as Morar might have hoped for. The most connected population group are the 14- to 20-year-old boys in computer-game and football-fan age, and these are also the most likely to have a go at under-equipped and outnumbered police on the first warm day of spring. A fair proportion of the protesters were minors. Add to this that Chisinau’s universities are all within walking distance of where the demonstrations took place; it was no coincidence that protests turned nasty when lessons ended at 1pm.

Moreover, this segment of the population is most prone to hold nationalist convictions as a surf through the chatrooms of the region shows. Nationalism in Moldova among the younger generation is Greater Romanian nationalism, dreaming at unification, and as such deeply anti-Communist, though not necessarily democratic. 120,000 young Romanians have already taken up Romania’s offer of dual citizenship. Add to this the desolate economic situation in Moldova – where many qualified young people are forced to take menial work abroad due to lack of chances home – and you have a very disaffected youth.

Morar, while alleging the presence of government provocateurs, also told bne that, organizing the protests, she and her friends crucially underestimated two factors – the unpredictable power of social networking technologies, and the political convictions of Moldovan youths. Now Morar’s groups are the inadvertent victims of the protests they triggered, but did not control. On April 15, Morar was placed under house arrest and is facing up to eight years in jail on charges of inciting mass riots.

Moldovan elections to strengthen Euro-communism in one country

Graham Stack for Russia Profile (www.russiaprofile.org)

Analysts Say That the EU Will Push Ahead with Europeanizing Moldova in Partnership with the Ruling Communists

Moldova might be “Europe’s poorest country,” but it is rich in anomalies. The parliamentary elections held there on April 5 only added to these. It all went off a little too smoothly in the end. President Vladimir Voronin’s ruling Communist Party took just under 50 percent of the popular vote, but won just over the necessary number of seats in the parliament (61 out of 110) to ensure that the Communists will name the next president. Voronin is due to step down after the two terms in office stipulated by the constitution.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), while noting skewed media coverage, confirmed the results. “I am delighted with the progress of democracy in Moldova. These elections were very good, and they gave me great confidence in the future of this country,” said Petros Efthymiou, the head of the delegation of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and a special coordinator of the OSCE short-term observers.

The results roughly dovetailed with the exit polls, but the number of mandates was marginally more than predicted, meaning that the results could have been fiddled with to ensure a sufficient number of seats to elect the president. Moldova’s constitution is a unique mix of parliamentary and presidential – the president is elected by the Parliament in a secret ballot, with up to two rounds of voting. However, in other respects it is a presidential republic, with the president appointing the prime minister, and the executive branch separate from legislative one. The president also determines foreign policy.

The parliamentary elections were thus also de facto presidential elections. Since the incumbent president Vladimir Voronin, by far the most dominant figure in Moldovan politics, has to step down after two terms, a lot rested on the outcome of these elections.

Voronin has openly stated that he would pursue a Den Xiaoping outcome, allowing him to continue to determine the country’s trajectory while not holding the highest office. This lent the Communist Party a powerful motive to force through an unchallengeable electoral result, similar to that achieved by United Russia in the 2007 Duma elections in Russia, intended as a future power base for then President Vladimir Putin.

“The elections of 2009 were neither free nor fair,” said Igor Munteanu, the director of Chisinau’s Institute for Development and Social Initiatives. “The reason is that the ruling party has acquired almost unlimited resources to influence and advocate its interests. With no counterbalance force from the judiciary, and with the main opposition parties largely fixed into internecine wars, these elections provided a textbook study on how to not conduct elections, rather than following the general standards of the OSCE/CoE.”

Sixty-eight year old Voronin is unlikely to seek the post of prime minister, however. Munteanu believes that Voronin will most probably remain in the Parliament, meaning that the whole construction of his party will change, with the focus of the “vertical of power” shifting elsewhere and “leaving the presidency more as a decorative institution.”

The exact identity of the Communists’ candidate for the presidency is still a mystery. “Since he [Voronin] personally tried to reduce the chances of any potential rival/candidate inside of the ruling Communist Party, all candidates that were suggested by the media were met with criticism or ostracism from the presidential office,” said Munteanu.

Marian Lupu, the former speaker of the Parliament, is one person often mentioned as a possible next president. While apparently loyal to Voronin and a disciplined member of the party, he had in the past even spoken out in favor of future NATO membership for Moldova. “Voronin will look for a less intelligent and more faithful figure to occupy the presidential seat, which he will keep under control while taking the office of the parliamentary speaker,” said Sergiu Panainte, a project coordinator at the Soros Foundation Romania.

Moldova is not only anomalous in terms of its constitution and its geography (it counts as a Black Sea littoral state although it is landlocked). It is also one of the few countries to be both attempting to reintegrate a secessionist region — the tiny self-proclaimed Transdnestr republic–while staving off attempts to be absorbed by the neighboring big brother Romania, with which it shares history and language.

Its foreign policy is equally anomalous: in the 1990s, Moldova strove to reunify with Russia within the Russia-Belarus union, until Russia’s refusal to play ball caused the same Communist Party to make a smooth shift in 2005, and aim at EU membership and cooperation with NATO instead. Experts see the elections as having paradoxically strengthened the Communists in negotiations with the EU, and thus given new impulses to Moldova’s integration with the union.

Independent political analyst Ion Marandici said that “the Moldovan Communists have declared very often that their goal is to join the European Union. That is why, paradoxically, they will go on with the economic reforms while continuing to infringe on media freedom, freedom of expression and more generally on human rights, in order to combat their political competitors.”

Marandici sees the elections as having strengthened Moldova’s hand in negotiations with the EU. “The victory of the Communist Party will force the EU to regard the Moldovan Communists not merely as a historical accident, but as legitimate representatives of the Moldovan voters,” he said. “The EU dealt carefully and decided to keep some checks on the Communist elite before elections, and indirectly conditioned the signing of the Enhanced Agreement [the document replacing the expired Partnership and Cooperation Agreement] with the conduct of free and fair parliamentary elections.”

With the OSCE observers having declared the elections free and to a certain extent fair, the EU will now have to continue its negotiations with the Communist Party, believes Marandici. “That is why probably in the near future, we will witness the signing of an Enhanced Agreement between the EU and Moldova that would envisage the status of an ‘associated member’,” he said. “The European soft power approach succeeded in Europeanizing the Moldovan communists.

Unfortunately, it failed to delete some of their Soviet-era habits and parts of their biography. These are simply incompatible with European values.” Igor Munteanu, however, believes that this core incompatibility will limit EU openness to Moldova. “The election of Communists has clear implications for EU’s offer to Moldova. Since their rule is not equivalent to democratic rule, Moldova will be met with open suspicion and mistrust, which could further encourage its leadership to seek ‘consolation’ in a tango with Russia.”

But in view of disappointment with the results of the “colored revolutions” in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, the year 2008 seems to have seen a shift in European thinking regarding the feasibility of revolutionary change in what are very weak and fragile states. In 2008, the EU even started talking to and opening doors for “Europe’s Last Dictatorship,” Belarus, next to which Moldova looks much more democratic. Instead of a U.S.-sponsored regime change, the new European strategy seems to be to persuade existing undemocratic regimes to change their ways peacefully, using the positive incentive of increasing integration with Europe.

In fact, this is not really anything new. In neighboring Romania, most of the work in getting the country ready for NATO and the EU was done in the 1990s by the Party of Democratic Socialism (PSD) under President Ion Iliescu – direct heirs of the notoriously repressive Ceausescu Communist dictatorship, in comparison to which Alexander Lukashenko’s Belarus is a shining example of democracy.

Belarus’ stage-managed democracy fails its test from the West

Graham Stack in Minsk for business new europe (www.businessneweurope.eu)

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko has recently been trumpeting his desire to hold ‘unprecedently fair and open’ parliamentary elections as part of a thaw in relations with the West. Underlining his intentions, he demonstratively provided a warm welcome to a contingent of 450 observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

He also promised major improvements to the electoral process in a country widely billed as ‘Europe’s last dictatorship’. But today, Monday September 29, revealed the limits of ’stage-managed’ democracy. The OSCE observers refused to play their scripted role – and declined to recognize the elections as free and fair.

In contrast to Russia’s ‘managed democracy’ where only a handful of Western election observers were invited to elections in 2007, Belarus’s ’stage-managed democracy’ actively welcomed a large OSCE contingent, a fact that Anne-Marie Lizin, Vice President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and special coordinator of the OSCE short-term observers, warmly praised in a Minsk press conference discussing the OSCE mission’s findings September 29.

However, despite opposition fears, the OSCE observers did not allow themselves to deceived by appearances, and refused to find the elections democratic.

“The clear signals to improve the election process were not implemented and substantial improvements are required if Belarus is to conduct genuinely democratic elections,” said Lizin, adding that the elections “fell short” of democratic standards.

The OSCE’s findings will be a setback for Lukashenko who has staked a lot of personal credibility on securing Western recognition for the parliamentary elections.

Lukashenko declared last week that if the West failed to recognize the elections as democratic, he would break off the nascent thaw in relations.

The OSCE observers criticized specifically the lack of transparency in vote counting. In 48% of polling stations, the transparency of counting was assessed as bad or very bad. In 35% of cases, OSCE observers were prevented or hindered from observing the count.

The OSCE was broadly critical of most aspects of the elections, saying in a statement that “the legislative framework continues to present obstacles for elections in line with OSCE commitments. The media coverage of the campaign did not provide meaningful information for voters to be able to make an informed choice. Political parties played a minor role and restrictions imposed by the state authorities did not allow for a vibrant campaign with real competition.”

OSCE representative Geert Ahrens however expressed optimism that the originally expressed intentions on the parts of the Belarus authorities to hold fully democratic elections, while not properly implemented, still provided the basis for ongoing dialogue and for improving relations with Europe.

“We would only be too happy to come up with a positive report,” said Ahrens, who still spoke of a ‘wind of change’ in Belarus. Lizin also said it was possible that the good intentions expressed by the country’s leadership had simply not be adequately communicated down the line.

But for all the diplomatic phrases, OSCE’s refusal to recognize the elections as democratic is a blow to authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, who likes to be seen as in control of everything.

The OSCE formula that Belarus has shown enough good intentions and made sufficient minor improvements for dialogue to continue could be face-saving on both sides.

However, putting all the diplomatese into perspective, Lizin, when asked to compare Belarus elections with Russia’s ‘managed democracy’ parliamentary elections of 2007, where she had been an observer in Vladivostok, stated unequivocally that the Russian poll had been much more democratic.

Opposition also lose

The elections were not only disappointing for Lukashenko, but also for his opponents. No democratic candidates managed to win their constituencies in Belarus’ first past the vote system where party allegiance plays virtually no role.

This constituted a major surprise. It was widely anticipated that the authorities would actively ensure the election of a number of opposition candidates to the parliament. Lists of opposition candidates supposedly prescripted for election victories were circulating on the Internet on the eve of elections.

However, when late in the night head of the Central Election Commission Lidia Yermoshina announced the voting results in 100 out of 110 electoral districts, not a single opposition candidate had won in his or her constituency. The opposition alliance United Democratic Forces fielded 70 candidates out of a total of 264 competing for the 110 seats.

Opposition figures attributed their failure to enter parliament to lack of access to media and electoral manipulation.

In addition to the non-transparency of vote counting referred to by the OSCE, opposition figures pointed to the prevalence of early voting, which reached up to 92% in voting wards largely populated by students.

Alla Salivonchik, 42, the head of a student dorm, told bne how she checked off the names of the students who had been to vote, “a relict from Soviet times” she said.

Opposition figures argue that, during early voting, sealed urns were not protected at night against simple substitution. In comments to bne on the day of voting, Jens Eschenbacher, member of the OSCE election observation team, confirmed to bne that the high level of early voting was a “Belarus peculiarity” and the overwhelming majority of election observers arrived too late to monitor the early voting adequately.

However, the final OSCE report had little to say on the prevalence of early voting.

“International observers just don’t grasp that it’s possible to substitute entire urns of votes,” Sergei Kolyakin, leader of the Belarus Communist party said at a press conference on election day. “They can’t get their mind around the idea. It’s not European.”

Kolyakin and Vladimir Nistyuk, both opposition candidates running for Minsk constituencies, also alleged that a major goal of electoral manipulation was to ensure the minimum turnout of 50% in Minsk, where voting activity on election day seemed very low frequency.

The final turnout countrywide was 75% according to the Central Election Committee,

Most people questioned by bne on the streets of Minsk confirmed that they had already or intended to vote.

Their almost unanimous complaint, however, was about the lack of information on candidates. Most voters talking to bne said they only learnt in the polling station which candidates were running in their constituency. They made their decision on the basis of the scarce information provided about the candidates on the premises of the polling station itself.

“We chose the youngest candidate, because the country’s future is in the hands of the young. Older people will simply sit in the parliament and do nothing,” said Anna, 54 and Anatolia, 57, now pensioners, formerly engineer and doctor respectively. Like most Minsk inhabitants interviewed on the strets, they declined to provide a surname. The 30 year old candidate they chose was in fact a communist.

“I chose the candidate on the basis of from a big rather than a small town, and high level of education,” said a 19 year old student who declined to give her name.

Lena, a 30 year old university lecturer said she did not yet know who she would vote for, but she would choose an opposition candidate if there was one running in her constituency. Otherwise she would go by level of education. She declined to give a surname in case she lost her job.

Alla Salivonchik, 42, and Elena Panuryna, 44, both said that she had voted for factory directors, as people who had achieved something and were not interested in power in and for itself.

Asked about their attitude to Lukashenko, passers by either declined to answer or said there was no current alternative. Only Sergei, a 21 year old student who wasn’t intending to vote, said that he was against the president.

Protestors allowed on the streets

While failing the electoral test, stage-managed democracy’s one real masterstroke yesterday was to allow opposition forces to take to the streets without any accompanying police presence.

This contrasted sharply with the harsh treatment meted out by Russian riot police to  similar unauthorised rallies last year, which was broadcast round the world.

Following the end of polling, 1000-1500 opposition supporters, mostly young, assembled outside the headquarters of the Central Electoral Committee on Minsk’s October Square for an unapproved demonstration together with opposition leaders Alexander Kozulin and Alexander Milinkevich and a large foreign press contingent.

Among the crowd were an Orange-style youth group called Young Guard who pitched symbolic tents on the square, reminiscent of the tent cities of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004. Young Guard chanted for an end to the Lukashenko regime.

Young Guard members however refused to comments on ties to organization in the Ukraine.

With no police presence anywhere to be seen, the Young Guard lit flares, hoisted flags and led the rally on an colourful unapproved march down Minsk’s main street, Independence Prospect, even pausing provocatively in front of the feared KGB headquarters. They then proceeded to the Government building on Lenin Square, where they called for the release of a number of political prisoners.

With still no single policeman in sight, the demonstrators marched back up to October square where they were addressed by Kozulin, who asked them to disperse peacefully.

In comments made to bne during the demonstration, Kozulin, recently released from jail, expressed fears that the West could lower its demands of Belarus regarding human rights and democracy in exchange for Belarus moving away from its close alliance with Russia.

“The danger exists, especially after the Georgian conflict. Lukashenko knows to exploit it,” he said.

Belarus’ stage-managed democracy still to lack opposition

Graham Stack for business new europe

Despite numerous declarations by President Alexander Lukashenko in advance that the parliamentary elections held yesterday September 29 would be democratic, not a single Belarusian opposition candidate was elected to the Belarusian House of Representatives.

During an opposition demonstration after end of polling, opposition leader Alexander Kozulin, only recently released from prison, said it was already clear that leading opposition candidates were trailing in their constituencies.

This was despite the fact it was widely anticipated that the Lukashenko administration would allow a number of opposition candidates to be elected to improve the country’s standing in the West.

Kozulin’s fears were later confirmed when head of the Central Election Commission Lidia Yermoshina announced the voting results in 100 out of 110 electoral districts. Not a single opposition candidate had won in his or her constituency.

Belarus operates a first past the post electoral system without party lists. Many voters questioned by bne on the streets complained about the lack of information about the candidates provided. Most voters seem to have decided on the premises of the polling station for whom to vote, basing their decision on age, education and experience of the candidates, as detailed briefly in the electoral information provided at the polling station.

In addition to the lack of information, opposition figures pointed to the very high level of early voting as providing opportunity for falsification of the elections by simply substituting sealed urns.

Belarus had demonstratively extended a warm welcome to international election observers, including a large contingent from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

The ’stage-managed’ democracy approach differed strongly from Russia’s ‘managed democracy’ where the number of Western election observers for parliamentary  elections in 2007 was strictly limited.

In comments to bne on the day of voting, Jens Eschenbacher, member of the OSCE election observation team, confirmed that the high level of early voting was a ‘Belarus peculiarity’ and most election observers arrived too late to monitor the early voting adequately.

The OSCE will present its findings on the elections at a press conference later today.

Opposition leaders also pointed to the fact that very few opposition representatives were allowed to monitor the vote counting process.

However, the Belarus regime will claim that the presence of OSCE observers and the participation of opposition candidates in elections suffices for the elections to be declared free and fair.

In an interview with Western press last week, Lukashenko said he would break off the nascent thaw in relations with the West if the elections were not recognized as such.

In a further manifestation of Alexander Lukashenko’s ’stage-managed democracy’, a unapproved Orange-style opposition demonstration numbering 1000-1500 marched last night from the Central Election Commission headquarters in the Palace of the Republic on Oktyabrskaya Square past the feared KGB headquarters on Independence Prospect down to the Parliament on Lenin Square.

They encountered absoutely no police presence – in strong contrast to the harsh treatment meted out by Russian riot police to similar unapproved rallies in Russia last year, and broadcast worldwide by TV channels.

The demonstration then returned to Oktyabrskaya square where Kozulin called on it to disperse peacefully.

In comments to bne, Kozulin called Belarus' new economic policy of privatization and improving the investment climate “superficial and only for show”. He said he did not expect any improvement in the political climate to come from increasing foreign investment in the country. However, he declined to expressly warn Western investors from investing in the country.

Kozulin told bne he feared that the West would lower the demands it was making of the Belarus regime in an effort to woo Belarus away from its alliance with Russia, and in return for opening the economy to Western investment.

Putin’s Finest Hour a Distant Memory as Hopes for Democracy are Dimmed in St. Petersburg

Graham Stack for Russia Profile

For someone who loves to display a good memory for facts and figures, Russian President Vladimir Putin suffers from severe amnesia regarding one decisive episode in the history of his country: the putsch attempt of 1991. The residents of St. Petersburg who took part in resisting the putsch remember those days more accurately than Putin.

Putin himself now jogs their memory for all the wrong reasons. For the first time since the Soviet era, there is an almost complete lack of political alternatives to the current administration, and the government does all it can to maintain the status quo by controlling TV and “managing” democracy. Putin’s cricket score popularity ratings and the economy’s snowballing growth also help.

Every revolution has its Thermidor

Alexander Rahr mentions in his Putin biography “The German in the Kremlin” that, on the first day of the putsch, the mayor of St. Petersburg and Putin’s boss Anatoly Sobchak was at Boris Yeltsin’s dacha in Moscow. The KGB had orders to arrest Sobchak immediately upon his return at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport, but “To their great surprise, when they arrived, they found the plane guarded by armed police units. Putin had returned from vacation and learning of Sobchak’s pending arrest, decided to defend him by all means possible, thus openly turning against his former employers.” According to Rahr, Putin arrived at the airport in person, put Sobchak in his car and drove him at breakneck speed into town, where crucial talks were held with the head of the city’s KGB and military. The negotiations resulted in the law-enforcement agencies agreeing not to intervene.

Alexander Sungurov, human rights activist and senior lecturer at the St. Petersburg branch of the Higher School of Economics, was a democratic deputy in the Leningrad Soviet at that time.

“Perhaps the most important thing in St. Petersburg,” he remembered, “was the stance of the head of police, who refused to follow orders from Moscow to disperse demonstrators. In addition, Petersburg was the only city where even the Communist Party showed some opposition to the putsch, demanding that Gorbachev be released and shown on TV so that people could see he was alive.”

Sungurov continued to work as a deputy of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly throughout the 1990s. “I remember Putin well, of course. He was a perfectly normal aide to Sobchak. He was someone we often spoke with. He’s basically a conformist, loyal to the team of which he is a member. When he was on Sobchak’s team, he was loyal to Sobchak.”

At present, Sungurov is a member of the Presidential Committee on Human Rights under the chairmanship of Ella Panfilova. “You have to understand that every revolution is followed by a downturn, every revolution has its Thermidor. That’s just a law of physics. The question is just how far it goes. The only real alternative to Putin was General Alexander Lebed, and if he had become president, things would have been a whole lot worse. So Putin taking charge of the country in the authoritarian phase following the revolution is far from the worst thing that could have happened.”

Sungurov is upbeat about the newly-elected president Dmitry Medvedev. “The main thing is to learn from mistakes and to get ready for the next democratic wave, which I believe will be coming very quickly. For the first time in a century, at least since Vladimir Lenin, the new president will be someone whose parents have a higher humanitarian education. Medvedev doesn’t belong to the KGB Corporation.”

“If Putin had stayed president it would have been like in Central Asian republics,” he added. “But he had the courage to say enough’s enough. The fact that he hasn’t completely gone, but is staying as prime minister, is also understandable. Putin himself said that he is staying ‘because I know what my friends the siloviki are planning for the country if I leave completely.’ Putin can control the siloviki and Medvedev can’t.”

“The real revolution in Russia took place when independent deputies were elected in 1990,” Sungurov concluded. “What happened during the putsch in 1991 was the equivalent of the colored revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia. We’ve been through all that already. We’re waiting for the next stage now.”

What I fought for I still have

Lev Apostolov, 34, now a logistics manager in the book trade, was a student in 1991 and one of the youngest to join the official defense of the Leningrad government during the Putsch.

“I went straight to Nevsky Prospekt and joined in a demonstration against the Putsch. The next day I went back and joined the official defenders of city hall. It seems funny now, but it wasn’t funny then. There were six of us in the brigade – my school friend Jan, another student, a butcher, a burglar (by his own admission). There were groups of martial arts enthusiasts and a lot of Afghan veterans.”

“We were assigned to patrol the Bolshaya Morskaya Street and to build a barricade right beside a cinema called Barrikada. So we piled up trash cans,” said Apostolov. “We were given arm bands and told not to jump on tanks if they appeared. That whole night was very tense, full of rumors. In the morning came the announcement that the putsch had failed, and they played Bob Marley on the speakers. I remember that the democrats in city hall behaved with great dignity and calm. Sobchak gave a splendid speech – fascism will not pass things of that sort.”

“Yeltsin was a hero at that time. Without any publicity at all, the democrats could gather thousands and thousands of people. Now look at the Dissenters’ March. They advertise on the radio, on Ekho Moskvy. And still no one goes. Everyone was politicized back then. Perestroika was a great time. Of course, there were huge hopes, many of which were never fulfilled, but I don’t regret anything. What I was defending then was my right to travel, to hear the music I want to, to read the books and watch the films I want to. And these rights I still have.”

With regard to the status quo, Apostolov said, “The biggest problem with Putin is that, if they are tightening the screws now, when there’s no reason to, what on earth are they going to do when the price of oil falls, when the problems start? I can’t understand why they want to turn people into idiots with this farce of an election. I took my bulletin with me from the voting booth.”

Fed up with being afraid

The day after Dmitry Medvedev took 70 percent of the vote despite his candidacy having been announced just two months previously, around 1000 members of St. Petersburg’s liberal opposition forces gathered to hold a Dissenters’ March, showing that not everyone had forgotten what democracy is about. March 3 is also the anniversary date of the overthrow of the Romanov monarchy and the establishment of a parliamentary democracy in 1917. But among those marching, memories of 1991 were more important than those of 1917.

Anatoly Sergeev, 62, who calls himself a “simple worker,” reminisced about how different it was all back then. “I went to St. Isaak’s Square and joined a brigade of official defenders. We had no weapons. We built barricades. In contrast to today, there were no police trying to stop us. At night we then sat on the rooftops by the square drinking tea. There was fear in the air. But in the end nothing happened.”

“It was a great mistake to let the Soviet Union collapse,” Sergeev argued. “They should have kept the Union – there was a majority in favor of it at the referendum. No one had permission to break up the USSR. The individual republics creating their own central banks out of the Soviet state bank drove the last nail into the coffin. I still like Gorbachev, but he should have been tougher. Sobchak was a thief; the only good thing he did was to rename Leningrad Petersburg. And he acted bravely during the Putsch.”

Turning to contemporary politics, Anatoly pulls no punches. “Putin’s just a puppet, other people are pulling the strings. He has done a lot, but not for me. How can you live on a pension? I have a bad heart and need medicine. I had to pay for my daughter to study somehow. And prices keep rising.”

Despite straitened circumstances, Anatoly is proud of having resisted the putsch. “I don’t regret taking part at all. I didn’t even think twice back then. It’s simply that at some stage you get fed up with being afraid. Why don’t they give us proper elections today? I would have voted for Ivanov, the defense minister, if he had stood. He’s a strong figure. Why did they not let him stand? Why did it have to be Medvedev?”

A child of the revolution

Lena, 46, a school librarian and another participant in the March 3 Dissenters’ March in St. Petersburg, said that she had supported the resistance to the putsch with all her heart. The only reason she did not join herself was having her first child.

“Of course, it was all terribly frightening, the putsch I mean,” Lena remembered. “But I saw the people who were involved before and after. Their faces were alive, that’s all I can say. Their eyes were bright. Look around you now at the faces here. People are awake. Look at the faces of the police. Completely dead.”

“That’s why I came here,” she said. “Of course I know it’s no use, that no one will pay attention. But I come here to feel myself a person, to feel myself honest. These elections were not honest.”

Asked if her daughter knows about the Putsch, Lena answered: “Of course, she’s aware of it all. Much more than the other kids her age are. She’s not here today, but I know she’s on our side. Her time will come.”