Amusing Photo of the Day: Attack of the Giant Ukrainian Transformer!

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Photo from The Globe and Mail: "A car passes by a giant transformer, made of discarded old cars and scrap metal, outside the town of Yuzhny, Ukraine, some 40 km south of the Black Sea port of Odessa."

Forget the Missile Gap. Forget the Mineshaft Gap. How about the Transformer Gap? Were the Soviets developing an invincible army of massive transformers to overrun Europe? Don't we need to know more about this?

Seeing this, it's a wonder the Cold War ended the way it did.

Around the World: China, Zimbabwe, Somalia, the Ukraine, and the Vatican

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The latest in our ongoing series... (for previous entries, see here or here).

1) China: "China's exports have dropped into their biggest decline in a decade. Exports in December were down 2.8% from the same time last year, a bigger decline than November's 2.2% drop, the China Daily said."

Even though "China's economy relies on domestic demand for its goods and services more than any other country in Asia," which is to say, even though the decline in exports is perhaps less of a concern to China than it would be for others, what the numbers show is that "China is no more immune to worldwide trade problems than any other large economy." And it is likely to get worse: "With Japan, the US and Europe now in recession, China's heavily trade-dependent economy is expected to harder hit through the coming year."

Still, a growth rate of 7.5% in 2009 wouldn't be so bad, would it?

2) Zimbabwe: "Zimbabwe's cholera epidemic has killed more than 2,000 people and almost 40,000 have contracted the normally preventable disease, the World Health Organisation said on Tuesday."

As if it weren't already bad enough in that wretched place, what with the tyrant Mugabe clinging to power and continuing to oppress the people, now there's this, which "has spread to all of Zimbabwe's 10 provinces because of the collapse of health and sanitation systems." And the situation will only get worse during the January-March rainy season.

3) Somalia: "Ethiopian troops pulled out from crucial bases in Mogadishu on Tuesday, leaving a power vacuum that was quickly filled by Islamist fighters who seized their positions."

And so, with the Ethiopians soon to be out, within a matter of days, Somalia is left to the Somalis... and to "Somalia’s Islamist movement," which "has made a steady comeback, with Islamist factions again controlling much of the country.

One war is over, but another is already underway: "Many Western diplomats and other Somalia analysts have warned that once all the Ethiopians are gone, the various Islamist factions will unleash their considerable firepower on each other in a scramble to take over the country. Some of that fighting has already kicked off, with dozens of people killed in the past week in combat between moderate and radical Islamist factions."

4) Ukraine: "Just hours after Russia resumed delivery of natural gas to the European Union through Ukrainian pipelines, Kiev has admitted to blocking the supplies. Ukraine is claiming that Gazprom has established 'unacceptable' conditions for the transit of the gas to Europe."

It's a complicated situation, obviously, with Gazprom blaming the U.S. for backing the Ukraine (and accusing the Ukraine of stealing gas), but it is essentially a regional dispute between Moscow and Kiev "over gas pricing and the lucrative transit fees paid to Kiev for gas transported across its pipelines." (Though Anne Applebaum notes that it was actually Putin, who still runs the show in Russia, who actually turned off the gas, not Gazprom. So it's political, not just commercial, and, this year, Russia is very much to blame.)

Russian gas is essential to much of Europe, but what is needed is for Europe to disentangle itself from the situation by reducing its dependency on Russian gas in the first place. And that requires, in Applebaum's view (one I share, though I defer to her expertise here), "a true, unified E.U. energy policy," even if, as Clay Risen points out, there are no "easy or obvious answers" and, to put it mildly, "difficulties inherent in any such effort."

5) Vatican: "Decrying the violence that Mexicans are enduring, the Vatican has suggested excommunication as a possible punishment for drug traffickers whose war with the government has led to the deaths of thousands of people in the last year. But the Roman Catholic Church's severest form of rebuke would probably have little effect on traffickers and killers who lack a religious conscience, the Vatican's No. 2 official, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, acknowledged."

You think?

Orange dissolution -- again

By MSS

(It has been a while since I exercised the posting privileges Michael kindly gave me. The following is cross-posted at Fruits & Votes, where I have followed Ukraine off and on since establishing the blog in 2005.)

For the second time since the Orange Revolution of late 2004, a coalition cabinet consisting of the parties of President Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, who led these coalitions as Prime Minister, has been formally dissolved.

While US media coverage has focused on divisions with respect to the recent Russia-Georgia conflict as underlying the split, the real cause is deeper still: the parties remain suspicious of one another and those suspicions, there all along, would only get worse as the 2010 presidential elections approach.

The one manner in which the Russia-Georgia conflict probably has realigned internal Ukrainian politics is that it is now harder to imagine the sort of coalition that initially followed the 2006 parliamentary elections: one between defeated 2004 presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych's Party of Regions and Yushchenko's Our Ukraine.

Given that a government coalition must be proposed by a majority in parliament--there is no provision for the President to appoint a government or for the largest party to form a minority government tolerated if not actively supported by other parties--what options are left? A Tymoshenko-Yanukovych coalition? It is the only formula not yet tried.

Such a coalition does not seem to me as odd as it might at first appear. Tymoshenko has positioned herself--and often been perceived in the West--as the more radical firebrand relative to the more technocratic Yushchenko (who, as a former Central Bank president, is hardly the sort of politician one would ever have imagined having his name chanted by thousands of protesters!). Nonetheless, her electoral coalition spans east and west Ukraine to a greater degree than either of the other two, and the Russia-Georgia conflict revealed her to be somewhat more accommodating towards the government of the Russian Federation than Yushchenko would like to be.

A coalition between Tymoshenko and Yanukovych would be an odd one institutionally, however, in that it would exclude the party of a presidency that remains quite powerful, the legislative initiative in government-formation notwithstanding. One of the greatest powers of the presidency, however, would be neutralized by the Yulia-Regions coalition: a veto that required a two-thirds vote to override. The parties of Tymoshenko and Yanukovych together have over 70% of the seats.

And then, there is always the possibility of constitutional changes that would make the presidency weaker, and the first-linked news item notes that such a possibility actually was one of the triggers of the coalition collapse:

Our Ukraine quit after denouncing a vote to cut presidential powers in which Tymoshenko joined Yanukovich and his party.

Provisions of the constitution make calling an early parliamentary election difficult (though the president managed to find a way a year ago). Besides, new elections would be unlikely to do anything but reconfirm the tripartite division among these three major parties.

In other words, somehow the three titans of post-Orange Revolution Ukraine are going to have to muddle through. Or at least that is how it looks from here. While I follow Ukraine in the sense that I have visited and care a lot about the country, and use it as a case in some of my research and teaching, I do not claim to be an expert. Maybe someone who follows the country more closely can offer some other scenarios, but muddling through is about all I see. (Unless, of course, the Yulia-Regions coalition moves up the presidential election. Is that possible? Just a thought.)

KEELEY HAZELL - MAXIM UKRAINE COVERGIRL

Ukraine: Return of the Orange?

By MSS

The results of Sunday's parliamentary election in Ukraine are almost final. It looks like the two erstwhile Orange partners, President Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine and the Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko (BYuT), will have enough seats to reconstitute their coalition, should they be able to conclude an agreement on policy and office spoils.

As was the case in the previous elections of March, 2006, the winner of the plurality of the vote was the Party of Regions, led by Viktor Yanukovych, the man whom Yushchenko defeated in the 2004 "Orange Revolution" re-run of the presidential election that initially had Yanukovych declared, fraudulently, the winner.

However, that is all he has won -- the most votes and seats. The Ukrainian constitution gives no advantage in the government-formation process to the largest party (if it has less than 50% of the seats). It also gives no advantage in government-formation to the president. Rather, a majority coalition must be negotiated among parties in parliament summing to more than half the seats, which then presents its candidate for prime minister to the president (who must appoint that candidate).

After the 2006 elections, it was not possible for BYuT and Our Ukraine to form a majority without another party. It was initially expected that the two parties, plus the Socialists, would form a three-party majority coalition. However, the Socialists ultimately opted to form a government with Regions, thus making Yanukovych the prime minister. This government was unstable, racked with charges of corruption and vote-buying, and ultimately was dissolved, paving the way for these early elections.

The big winner is Tymoshenko, whose party gained a whopping eight and a half percentage points, compared with 2006. The Socialists appear to have fallen below the 3% threshold, barely.

Here are the votes percentages and some other facts about the result, with the 2007 number first and the 2006 number and change from 2006 in parentheses.

Regions, 34.2 (32.1, +2,1)
BYuT, 30.8 (22.3, +8.5)
Our Ukr, 14.2 (14.0, +.2)
Communist, 5.4 (3.7, +1.7)
Bloc of Lytvyn, 4.0 (2.4, +1.6)
Socialist, 2.9 (5.7, -2.8)

Votes cast for parties below 3% threshold: 11.4 (22.3)
Lists below the 3% threshold: 15 (40)
Lists with more than 1%, but less than 3%: 2 (6)

I do not have a turnout figure, but we can surmise from Our Ukraine's raw votes and the fact that as a percentage of the total these did not change, that turnout was down only a little bit. (The Our Ukraine votes were just under 3.3 million in 2007 and just over 3.5 million in 2006.)

Seat estimates are not provided by the Election Commission yet, but the system is one of pure national proportional representation for all parties that cross the 3% threshold. As noted above, the percentage of votes cast on parties that failed to clear the threshold was about half in 2007 what it was in 2006, partly because so few small parties bothered to run this time.

Applying the percentages of each threshold-crossing party to the 88.6% of votes that were "effective" (i.e., not wasted on parties that missed the threshold), we get estimated seat totals as follows:

Regions: 174
BYuT: 157
Our Ukr: 72
Communist: 27
Bloc of Lytvyn: 20

If those results hold, then the two Orange partners would have 229, or 50.9% of the 450 seats in parliament, three more than needed to constitute a majority. An election can hardly get closer than that! And if the Socialists yet manage to cross the threshold on a final count, BYuT and Our Ukraine would fall below 50%. It is worth noting that the Bloc of Lytvyn is led by the former parliamentary speaker, Volodymyr Lytvyn, who facilitated the negotiations in 2004 that led to the re-run of that year's presidential election. He would be a potential (though not necessarily reliable) alternative coalition partner should the Socialists' crossing of the threshold turn out to prevent BYuT and Our Ukraine from having a majority.

It is worth emphasizing again that the parliamentary result, whatever it turns out to be in the end, will not be decisive for government formation. Two (or possibly more) parties will have to negotiate to appoint a prime minister and cabinet. Of course, Tymoshenko will insist on not only the prime ministership but probably more than a two-thirds majority of the cabinet posts (her party's proportional contribution to the majority), whereas Yushchenko might try to keep the door open to renewing the coalition with Yanukovych (which would also be a majority), if for no other reason than to keep Tymoshenko from demanding more than he is willing to concede. The president's party may be small, at 14%, but the presidency remains a powerful institution and, more importantly, his party is in a pivotal position in parliament. The negotiations could go on for a while, but right now, things are looking Orange again in Ukraine.

(Cross-posted in the "Ukraine" block at Fruits & Votes.)

Around the world: Russia and the Ukraine

By Michael J.W. Stickings

We've been doing a lot of international-news-oriented posts recently -- not because we're turning away from the U.S. -- we're still mostly U.S.-focused -- but because, well... because there's been lot going on around the world. The situation in Burma is the big story at the moment, and rightly so, and we've been covering it extensively, as we've been covering other top stories, often election-related, but here, in the latest entry of our Around the World series, are a couple more, both from the former Soviet Union:

1) Russia: It looks like Putin might be pulling a Chavez after all. He's not trying to change the rules to keep himself in power -- no, he hasn't gone that far, yet -- but he may not step aside, or out, when his presidential term is up.

President Vladimir Putin, in a surprise announcement, opened the door Monday to becoming Russia's prime minister and retaining power when his presidential term ends next year.

The popular Mr. Putin is barred from seeking a third consecutive term in the March presidential election, but has strongly indicated he would seek to keep a hand on Russia's reins after he steps down.

Mr. Putin's remarks Monday at a congress of the dominant, Kremlin-controlled United Russia party hint at a clear scenario in which he could remake himself as a powerful prime minister and eclipse a weakened president.

You know what they say about power, especially the absolute variety.

Putin may install a puppet as president -- say, current Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, a Putin loyalist whom Putin recently put in place -- and rule from parliament, the Duma.

Garry Kasparov, chess master and now the leader of the pro-democracy, anti-Putin forces in Russia is right: "In fact, Putin has done nothing more than decide to use United Russia [Putin's political party] as the main mechanism for retaining power." He is also right to attack "the anti-democratic and anti-constitutional nature of this whole electoral process".

**********

2) Ukraine: Another close election, too close to call:

Leaders of the two main political parties in Ukraine both claimed victory on Monday in crucial parliamentary elections, but the vote appeared so tight that it could be many days before a new prime minister takes office.

Supporters of Yulia V. Tymoshenko, the former prime minister who was a stalwart of the Orange Revolution of 2004, insisted that the final tally would show that she was the victor. But her chief rival, Prime Minister Viktor F. Yanukovich, dismissed those statements as premature.

*****

Officials said late Monday night that with 93 percent of the votes counted, Mr. Yanukovich’s party had 34 percent and Ms. Tymoshenko’s had 31 percent. But those numbers could fluctuate as polling places finish reporting.

Ms. Tymoshenko’s party said she would become prime minister again by reaching a deal with President Viktor A. Yushchenko’s party, which received 14 percent, rekindling an alliance that was triumphant in the Orange Revolution, but collapsed in acrimony later on.

Nothing is certain, however, and many votes remain to be counted. Yanukovich could still pull ahead.

But what the Ukraine needs is a Yushchenko-Tymoshenko alliance, that is, a continuation of the Orange Revolution that has brought genuine democracy and the prospect of a brighter future to a country still trying to emerge from the dark shadows of its former totalitarian masters.

More here.

Politics and coffee

By Michael J.W. Stickings

A striking image from the BBC: "Pro-government protesters in Ukraine are seen reflected on an advertising poster as they hold a rally against the president in Independence Square in Kiev."