Viktor Yushchenko today sacked the government of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko amid growing allegations of corruption in high offices and following the resignation of Olekzandr Zinchenko.
Viktor Yushchenko said he made the decision because infighting within his administration has begun to interfere with the goals that he set for his government after taking power following last year's Orange Revolution.
"Every day I witnessed more and more confrontations among these institutions at first, then serious conflicts on various issues, then backstage intrigues, which already started to affect the fundamentals of state policy," Yushchenko said.
Instead, Yushchenko has appointed Yuriy Yekhanurov, governor of the eastern Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, as acting prime minister and tasked him with forming a new cabinet. As head of the State Property Fund under former President Leonid Kuchma, Yekhanurov oversaw initial privatization in Ukraine in 1994-97.
Shortly after Yushchenko's announcement, Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) chief Oleksandr Turchinov announced his resignation. He gave no reason for the
Yushchenko says that he wants Tymoshenko back, but I can't really see that happening.
Zinchenko had resigned, accusing the government of widespread corruption and betraying the Orange Revolution.
This is a bold move by Yushchenko, and one that was coming sooner or later. He had to do something as the corruption talk was coming from within the government and not from any opposition.
SCSU Scholars thinks this is a positive step:
As I have said, the government formed after the Orange Revolution was a coalition, almost a unity government that included many disparate parties. This has obviously worked badly for Yushchenko over the summer. It takes some courage to put a powerful person like Tymoshenko into opposition, but this will no doubt burnish Yushchenko's credentials as the one with clean hands.
And Yushchenko needs to appear clean, especially after revelations about his son's ownership of the "copyrights" for Orange Revolution symbols and memorabilia.
In his own inimitable style, abdymok reprints a 2001 address signed by then President Leonid Kuchma, Speaker Ivan Pliushch and, you guessed it, Viktor Yushchenko:
in a democratic society, everyone has the right to hold his own beliefs and express them publicly. however, there is a border that no one, under any conditions, may cross. this is the law and responsibility for every word.
dirty techniques are not rare in the current world, which is characterized by tough methods of political struggle. but even against such a background, the current events in ukraine stand out by their cynicism and disrespect for moral norms: discrediting state officials, politicians and political forces, blackmailing the state organs and manipulation of public opinion.
The murder of Georgiy Gongadze figures prominently in the text.
More here:
My expectations for reform in the fall just took a nose dive. More generally, I am reminded about a question I've often had about Ukrainian history, "Why, whenever a Ukrainian government gets real autonomy, does it dissolve into bickering so quickly?"
and here:
Ms. Tymoshenko's goal isn't just to get herself into the parliament but to secure as many seats as possible for her bloc. This can be accomplished by leaving the post of the head of the government as a victim - humiliated and misunderstood (exactly how Mr. Yushchenko left his premier's post in the past), but loved by the people.
Ah, how I long for the good old days when we could just sit back and blog about other countries' scandals.
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