UKRAINE: OUR UKRAINE REGROUPING

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 KYIV 004600 SIPDIS SIPDIS KYIV 4138 KIEV 1540, KYIV 4597 E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/21/2016 TAGS: PGOV PREL UP SUBJECT: UKRAINE: OUR UKRAINE REGROUPING Classified By: Political Counselor Kent Logsdon for reasons 1.4(a,b,d). ¶1. (C) Summary. The People's Union Our Ukraine (PUOU) party, the dominant party inside the Our Ukraine bloc, is cleaning house in a move to reenergize itself, bring the party back under the President's wing, and possibly to regroup for new elections. The biggest shake-ups came in the party leadership--Presidential Secretariat Head Viktor Baloha was elected interim party leader and most of the big businessmen were removed from the presidium that decides party policy--moves most contacts saw as done at Yushchenko's behest. The fifteen people now sitting on PUOU's presidium are loyal personally to the President, but not all changes came easily--Baloha was selected as head of party only on the third ballot, after Yushchenko's repeated personal intervention, and for a three-month appointment. ¶2. (C) Comment. According to party leaders, Baloha's main task will be to reengage party members and raise the party's political ratings. With most contacts agreeing that Baloha's leadership is temporary and the party actively reaching out to cooperate with former political allies, it is clear that PUOU remains in transition. Party leaders and MPs continue to imply that Our Ukraine have their eyes on preterm Rada elections in 2007, but no one suggested that this was the primary goal of the party shake-up. With Our Ukraine's public opinion ratings in the single digits and alternate center-right political projects in the works, whether the attempted makeover will allow Yushchenko's political force to remain relevant is an open question. End Summary and Comment. Party Restructuring -------------- ¶3. (SBU) The biggest changes in PUOU took place in early December, after confused and divisive party congresses in October-November (ref A),with the subdivision of the party leadership into three parts. The party presidium is a fifteen-member body that makes most of the party decisions. As of December 7, this is led by Baloha; the other members are very close to Yushchenko personally. Former party head Roman Bezsmertniy now runs the executive committee, which implements the presidium's decisions. There is also a 212-member political council that meets at party congresses to elect leaders and vote on key party issues. Pavlo Kachur, an adviser to Yushchenko and a member of the presidium, said there were also structural changes underway within the party to make internal procedures more democratic and to make the party leadership responsible to the members. To this end, the November 11 party congress increased the quota of representatives on the political council from the provinces from 50 to 60 percent. (Note: PUOU is the dominant component of the six-party Our Ukraine Rada faction and electoral bloc, see ref B). Yushchenko Reexerting Control -------------- ¶4. (C) Several contacts indicated that the election of Baloha to lead the party was an effort by Yushchenko to regain control of a party from which he has drifted away. PUOU spokeswoman Tetyana Mokridi told us that for two years Yushchenko had distanced himself from PUOU because he wanted to be "the president of the whole country." Now he knows that a party base is necessary, but his unclear relationship with PUOU had hurt the party's ratings. Svitlana Guminyuk, an aide to Bezsmertniy, added that it is not clear how much support Yushchenko still has within the party, pointing to how hard the President had to fight for Baloha's election. Although the President was personally present at the December 7 vote, it took three tries for Baloha to get 122 votes from the 212-member political council. In contrast, former party leader Bezsmertniy received 160 to lead the executive committee on the first vote. Yushchenko's leadership changes, however, go deeper. He now has a new PUOU presidium made up of people personally loyal to him. In addition, Presidential Secretariat Deputy Heads Yatsenyuk and Bondar were elected to the political council in October, even though they had just joined the party prior to their election. Baloha Impact May Be Limited -------------- ¶5. (C) While views on Baloha as party leader were mixed, everyone agreed that his tenure would be temporary, most likely only until the next party congress, planned for late March 2007. Roman Zvarych, Yushchenko's representative in the Rada, told us that the Baloha election was no big deal KYIV 00004600 002.2 OF 003 because of its interim nature. In the meantime, he claimed, Bezsmertniy would continue to run the party on a day-to-day basis as he had been doing. (Comment: It does seem difficult to imagine that Baloha will be able to devote much time to party issues given his intense activities as Head of the Presidential Secretariat at a time of institutional competition for power. Bezsmertniy resigned as head of the Our Ukraine's Rada faction December 19, saying that he wished to focus his efforts on running the executive committee. End Comment.) ¶6. (C) MP Vyacheslav Kyrylenko, a member of the Our Ukraine Rada faction who just joined PUOU in December, told us that he thought the election of Baloha as party leader had been completely democratic. Yushchenko, after all, was head of the party and helped found it; his point of view should be taken into account. Kachur said Baloha's task would be to restructure the party in the next three months, but he could not dismiss the possibility that Baloha would be reelected in March. Interestingly enough, on December 20, Kyrylenko was named head of Our Ukraine's Rada faction, replacing Bezsmertniy. ¶7. (C) Guminyuk suggested that the changes in party leadership did not mean much. They were undertaken just to provide an "illusion of change" in order to mobilize ordinary party members, who were in a period of melancholy. Guminyuk, however, said that the choice of Baloha was not a bad one. He was tough, even cruel, and very capable. He could balance between camps within the party and could speak a common language with the Donetsk crowd (note: she meant Regions). In contrast, Mokridi said younger members of the presidium harbored suspicions of Baloha because he came from Medvedchuk's camp. According to Mokridi, Baloha himself said that he doesn't want to lead the party; he is just there as a manager. Whither the Dear Friends? -------------- ¶8. (C) In another change, the "lubi druzi" or dear friends--the financial backers of the party like Poroshenko, Martynenko, Zhvaniya, and Tretyakov, who had great influence over Yushchenko in 2004-05---were removed from the presidium as part of the housecleaning, with the exception of Kyiv governor Vira Ulyachenko. Deputy Chairman of the Budget Committee Zhebrivskiy, considered part of Poroshenko's camp, warned publicly that their removal from the party leadership would put an end to their financing of the party, but the people we spoke with in the party seemed doubtful that there would be much impact. Guminyuk stated that the big businessmen had already stopped financing the party--they had invested their money and were waiting for the dividends to pay off--so pique over their ouster would not have much effect. Kachur said the party had removed the "money-bags" to neutralize their influence on the party because the presidium had become a shareholders meeting. He added that OU had so many debts that the "dear friends" could not have been funding much anyway--or else they were holding out and using the debts like blackmail to protect their positions. Mokridi suggested the opposite: in the end the "Yushchenko oligarchs" would continue to pay their PUOU contributions because it was easier to support a "brand-name party" than try to create something new. Changes Portend Early Elections? -------------- ¶9. (C) Rumors continue to swirl in the press and the halls of the Rada that there may be preterm elections in 2007, but most OU folks we talked to were noncommittal. (Comment: It is likely that Yushchenko is using the threat of dismissing the Rada and holding new elections to try induce the Party of Regions to be more cooperative. However, views were mixed on what Yushchenko would consider to be the red line that would convince him to call early elections.) Guminyuk said that although she could not rule anything out, she thought Yushchenko was too timid to call early elections in the spring. In addition, the financial backers of the party did not want new elections; it was cheaper to negotiate with Regions than to finance new elections. Mokridi said opinion was split on early elections, but if Yushchenko did not replace Tarasyuk, the Cabinet would go 60 days without being complete, which would give him a pretext to dismiss the Rada. Zvarych declined comment on the possibility of new elections, but noted that there was currently no legal basis for holding them. Reaching Out to the Center-Right KYIV 00004600 003 OF 003 -------------- ¶10. (C) Perhaps as part of preparations for possible elections, PUOU has been reaching out to current and former political allies about future cooperation. Mokridi said Yushchenko wanted to return to 2002 when the democratic forces were united (note: the Our Ukraine electoral bloc in 2002 was wider, including Kostenko's Ukrainian People's Party and Pynzenyk's Reforms and Order Party),but the political situation had changed, and this would not be so easy. The best option would be the one Bezsmertniy suggested in October, reiterated by Zvarych December 13--a loose confederation of national-democratic parties. ¶11. (C) Mokridi was dismissive of possible competition from the new political project of former PUOU executive committee head Mykola Katerynchuk, who left PUOU in November, and former Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko, who left the Socialist Party in July. Mokridi suggested that Lutsenko might even be elected PUOU head in March (note: Lutsenko told Ambassador November 17 that Yushchenko had approached him about this idea but that he had resisted). She pointed to Kyrylenko's decision to join PUOU on December 13 (and then agreement to be named OU faction head on December 21) as a plus for the party and a strike against Katerynchuk--Kyrylenko was one of the perceived young up-and-comers in Our Ukraine whose name had been linked to Katerynchuk's project. ¶12. (C) Kachur told us that the PUOU presidium had developed a plan to rebuild ties between "orange" parties. First, they would begin to consolidate ideas among parties on the center-right to develop a joint platform. Then they could have more formal working groups to develop cooperation. Only after the first two steps could there be a chance for organizational consolidation of parties into a formal bloc. At the very earliest, there would be visible progress in the spring. As for cooperation with the Tymoshenko Bloc (BYuT), Kachur assessed it as good, but limited by BYuT's less than democratic leadership and structure. ¶13. (C) It remains to be seen how successful PUOU will be in bringing other groups into its confederation. On December 20, Lutsenko announed his new civic movement People's Self-Defense and said he would not lead a political party. In addition, on December 20 Tarasyuk's Rukh and Yuriy Kostenko's Ukrainian People's Party finally reunited into the larger Rukh party they were in the 1990s. The former is a member of the Our Ukraine bloc, which could bring the latter into the fold, but if Yushchenko agrees to replace Tarasyuk (ref C),the new Rukh could turn to Tymoshenko-- BYuT Deputy Leader Turcyhnov already announced the possibililty that Rukh may join BYuT. ¶14. (U) Visit Embassy Kyiv's classified website: www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/kiev. Taylor