Behind Ukraine's power struggle

The president's call to dissolve parliament has brought the greatest turmoil since the 2004 revolution.

from the April 6, 2007 edition

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PARIS - Ukraine sits on the sensitive geopolitical border between East and West, and two years ago its "Orange Revolution" set off a dynamic toward greater democracy and independence from old ties to Moscow.

Yet a major political impasse has emerged amid a call for new elections in Ukraine on May 27 and an effort to dissolve parliament by embattled President Viktor Yushchenko, the guiding spirit of the Orange movement.

Mr. Yushchenko is locked in a power struggle with Moscow-leaning Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, creating a crisis of authority between the military and the interior ministry, and a battle over constitutional interpretations – all of which could awaken ethnic and regional divides, though no one expects tanks or troops in the streets.

While political tensions in Ukraine are often portrayed as the result of competing pulls from Moscow and the West, this crisis is seen more as a standoff between internal competitors and institutions. The underlying trouble, say some analysts, is that the same post-Orange Revolution reforms that brought multiparty democracy, separation of powers, and a free press to Ukraine also allowed for such loose, competing power centers between the parliament and the president that resolving disagreements between them has become the subject of intense disagreement.

"Many issues have not been regulated and this leaves lots of holes, which each side can interpret as it prefers," argues Alexander Sushko of the Independent Institute of Euro-Atlantic Integration in Kiev. "When it comes to a conflict, it is rather tough because Ukraine has no traditions to solve such a crisis."

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