Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
06KYIV4600
2006-12-22 07:01:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Kyiv
Cable title:  

UKRAINE: OUR UKRAINE REGROUPING

Tags:  PGOV PREL UP 
pdf how-to read a cable
VZCZCXRO2130
PP RUEHDBU
DE RUEHKV #4600/01 3560701
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 220701Z DEC 06
FM AMEMBASSY KYIV
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 0747
INFO RUEHZG/NATO EU COLLECTIVE
RUCNCIS/CIS COLLECTIVE
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).

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