When I interviewed the then-opposition leader shortly prior to the September 2007 parliamentary elections, Yulia Tymoshenko admitted that during her first stint as PM she had taken on too much personally and tried to do too much by herself. This was already common knowledge, of course. We’d all heard about the camp bed which she kept in the office, the superhuman effort to control every last detail of government, the seven-day working weeks and the long, long hours. Next time, she claimed, things would be different. She had already built up a great team of professionals in every sphere and they would be given the chance to do their jobs, she claimed. She wouldn’t, she assured me, try and do everything all on her own.
Hogging the limelight
Leadership comes naturally to the self-assured Mrs. Tymoshenko, and this can often lead to problems in delegating, but since her electoral victory there have been indications that she is trying to gradually move away from the perceived control freakery of 2005. However, the leading role the Prime Minister is personally adopting in the race to crown the new Kyiv mayor is fuelling suggestions of a return to her more overbearing ways. Far from taking a distant, back seat as befits the serving Prime Minister, Mrs. Tymoshenko has placed herself in the vanguard of the entire campaign. Not only is she the central figure in the billboard posters depicting Oleksandr Turchinov’s team (he’s the one second from left, by the way), the Prime Minister has also seen fit to place herself first on the BYUT list of deputies for the city council. She beams out from campaign brochures and smiles benignly alongside Mr. Turchinov in street-level posters all over town.
No other party engaged in the campaign has invoked their political leader in such a fashion, but then again, no other party has an iconic ace to play on the scale of a Yulia Tymoshenko. In fairness it must be hard for the BYUT team to resist the urge to use the Yulia icon every time they have to consider a new election strategy, such is the incredible potency it has displayed over the past five years. In 2002 Mrs. Tymoshenko’s bloc received just 7.2% of the vote. At the last elections she had rocketed to 31% and is probably much closer to 40% by now. Her unique image has become the bloc’s strongest asset, but it is in danger of becoming over-exposed among a jaded public would much prefer a bit of quiet, competent government.
A politically risky move
Mrs. Tymoshenko’s entry into the Kyiv mayoral campaign could end up doing significant damage to her public image. First and foremost, it is unbecoming for the head of government to put themselves up for election to what is after all a local council. It makes a mockery of both positions and utterly undermines the Prime Minister’s argument about letting professionals get on with the serious business of running the country. To make matters worse, if she now fails to win the election, it will be perceived as a direct rejection.
Her posturing also plays into the hands of Mrs. Tymoshenko’s opponents, who regard her desire to control every aspect of policy as one of the few chinks in the PM’s extensive armour. It allows them to depict her as a dangerous megalomaniac at a time when her soaring popularity makes people instinctively uneasy about such suggestions.
It is no coincidence that black propaganda materials have reappeared recently as part of the election campaign likening BYUT to the infamous White Brotherhood religious cult of the early 1990s, which was headed by an iconic female leader. Mrs. Tymoshenko has courted this sort of assault by her insistence on maintaining an almost saintly public persona, complete with glowing halo and all-white designer suits. There is always the danger that people will eventually grow tired of this performance, and that likelihood is significantly increased by her current attempts to be everywhere at once. She may be a strong political package, but both she and her advisers would do well to bear in mind that even the most enthusiastic consumers can have too much of a good thing.
