Last week Kyiv finally witnessed the first session of the new parliament, which opened for business on November 23. Within hours Party of Regions representatives were threatening to boycott sessions and caused confusion by appearing to set the next meeting for late this week.
Such spoiling strategies had been very much expected by political analysts, who have widely speculated over the past few weeks about the exact nature of the inevitable efforts to disrupt the work of the new parliament and prevent the formation of an Orange majority government.
These negative tactics are not the sole preserve of the Party of Regions, of course. The country’s self-styled pro-democracy parties have turned parliamentary walk-outs, boycotts and belligerent podium occupations into something of a fine art over the past four years. Nevertheless, the enthusiastic adoption of these strategies by a party which champions stability and positions itself as the fount of reasoned economic management is almost breathtaking in its deceit.
The immovable political classes
The stability being offered by the Party of Regions is not stability in the Western understanding of the word, but is in fact closer in character to the kind of rigid order promised by Vladimir Putin in neighbouring Russia and beloved of post-Soviet pensioners throughout the former USSR. It is basically an appeal for more of the same, cushioned by the promise that as long as nobody rocks the boat the situation will not significantly deteriorate.
The implication is that those in power have the requisite experience and know best how things should be run. They rely heavily on the traditional disengagement from politics commonplace throughout the former USSR. As such it is a curious product of the Soviet past which continues to resonate with large sections of the population who have been brought up in an environment of political cynicism so all-pervasive that outsiders often find it hard to fathom.
Playing on fears of collapse
Herein lies the clear and present threat implicit in all this talk of “stability.” In a society where reading between the lines is a national pastime, everyone understands that any attempt to force a change in the political order will inevitably and necessarily lead to instability, chaos and the end of the world as we know it. The threat is particularly cruel and effective because the proffered alternative of total economic collapse appears so dire and remains so relatively fresh in the collective memory.
We have seen examples of this time and again in the repeated references to impending civil war or the disintegration of modern Ukraine to have emanated from the Party of Regions over the past few years as its political fortunes have ebbed and flowed.
Electorate opts for hope
The stability ticket first surfaced during the Orange Revolution itself, when posters appeared around the south and east of the country proclaiming: “Hope is good. Stability is better.” Many people around the country agreed with this appraisal of the chances any reformist government would have of cutting through the Gordian Knot of Ukrainian corruption, and to an extent you could argue that this “hope versus stability” pay-off has been proved fairly accurate.
Certainly the non-stop political chaos of the past three years would be unthinkable in Russia or Belarus, countries that pseudo-Soviet spin doctors would no doubt consider the very models of stability.
Luckily Ukrainians would appear to have slightly higher expectations and the majority of the population has voted in each of the last three national elections for the hope option. Faced with the prospect of an electorate that has so consistently favoured the promise of better things to come, the Party of Regions continue to fall back on what are their increasingly unconvincing promises of stability. The question now is how long they will be able to keep this double game up while apparently doing everything in their power to destabilise the country. The longer Ukraine operates without a functioning government, the emptier those stability boasts will appear.
