UKRAINE: PRESIDENT'S DEMANDS STRAIN OU; REGIONS

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 05 KYIV 002806

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/09/2017
TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR UP
SUBJECT: UKRAINE: PRESIDENT'S DEMANDS STRAIN OU; REGIONS
TRIES TO SLOW THINGS DOWN


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Classified By: Ambassador for reasons 1.4(b,d).


1. (C) Summary. While the parties are slowly going through
the procedures to prepare for a new Rada, the orange
coalition is either close to completion or teetering on the
edge of self-destruction, reportedly pushed by President
Yushchenko, his Chief of Staff Baloha, and NSDC Secretary
Plyushch. Presidential demands focus on a Tymoshenko
statement putting aside her presidential ambitions and
supporting Yushchenko, and OU faction agreement to support
either Plyushch, or possibly Volodymyr Lytvyn, as Speaker.
Former OU Justice Minister and party insider Roman Zvarych
was confident that an orange coalition could emerge after the
Rada opened, but he worried that Yushchenko would demand too
much from his own bloc, insist on nominating Plyushch as
Speaker against the wishes of the faction and thereby destroy
Our Ukraine and his own reelection chances in the process.
Yuliya Tymoshenko echoed these concerns, arguing that
Yushchenko's new-found support for Plyushch was a pretext to
collapse the orange coalition and move into some form of
cooperation with Regions. She calculated that since a formal
broad coalition would never get enough votes, Yushchenko's
team and Akhmetov/Yanukovych would reach an agreement where
there would be no coalition and Yanukovych would stay in
place for the next year in an acting capacity. Regions
faction leader Raisa Bohatyreva told the Ambassador that
Regions was prepared to go into opposition, but would
continue to demonstrate to the President that it was ready
for a broad coalition. Meanwhile, BYuT, OU-PSD, and the
Lytvyn Bloc have tried to kickstart the preparatory group
that must meet to set the opening date and agenda for the new
Rada, but have been stymied all week by Regions' claims that
they are not able to participate because their MPs have not
been registered by the Central Election Commission (CEC).
Regions claims, however, are somewhat undercut by the fact
that they delayed submitting their documentation to the CEC
until November 9, which Zvarych attributed to them simply
trying to hold up the process.


2. (C) Comment. Regions' procrastination in registering and
participating in the preparatory group would seem to be a bid
to buy more time hoping that internal disagreements between
the President's team, OU-PSD, and BYuT will continue to eat
away at the orange coalition. Yushchenko's public statements
continue to talk about an orange coalition, although he is
also pushing the idea of rapprochement between Tymoshenko and
Yanukovych, reportedly the subject of a November 7 meeting
with Tymoshenko. Presidential Chief of Staff Baloha told the
Ambassador that the two sides are close to agreement on a
coalition -- but we believe that the sticking point is
whether or not the President can convince the OU-PSD faction
to support either Plyushch or possibly Lytvyn as Speaker, and
whether this could bring about the OU-PSD implosion feared by
Zvarych; Tymoshenko's team has indicated that it will support
any OU candidate. Our take is that, if skillfully managed,
the President could get OU-PSD faction support for his choice
as Speaker, and certainly Plyushch or Lytvyn would be more
acceptable to Regions as an opposition party in a future
Rada. Lytvyn continues to be coy about his future, noting in
the press again that his bloc could support the creation of
an orange coalition without being a member of it. However,
as Regions acknowledges, talks still continue between Regions
and the President, despite the fact that everyone we have
spoken with from OU-PSD, BYuT, and elsewhere is convinced
that a formal coalition between Yushchenko and Regions will
spell the end of the President's already slim chances at
reelection. End summary and comment.

Zvarych: We Can Still Do Orange, If the President Helps
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3. (C) Former Justice Minister Zvarych told the Ambassador
November 8 that since the September 30 elections Regions has
argued that the President and OU broke their promise to
establish a broad coalition in the new Rada. He acknowledged
that OU had certainly talked about this as a possibility with
Regions, but there was never a commitment or final agreement.
He doubted that Yushchenko had ever agreed to such a deal,
although admitted that perhaps Plyushch and Baloha could
have. Zvarych said that senior Regions MP Kolesnikov had
approached him about the broad coalition, first arguing that
they should work together on ideological grounds, then
changing tactics and suggesting that Zvarych might have a
"personal motivation" for cooperating (a bribe, or perhaps
help with a business). Zvarych said that he had laughed --
it was clear that he was not in politics for the money and
that he had no businesses to speak of. He noted that others
in OU had also been approached by Regions. He recalled that
Regions had not exactly been supportive of him when he was in
the Yanukovych Government, so he wasn't sure why he should

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help them out now.


4. (C) Turning to the process of forming a coalition, Zvarych
first clarified his "quotes" in Ukrainska Pravda about his
"support" for NSDC Secretary Plyushch as Rada speaker. He
said that in the full interview, the journalist had asked if
the President asked him to vote for Plyushch, what would he
do. According to Zvarych, he had no choice but to say that
he would support Plyushch, because he would not go on record
saying that he would oppose the President. In his view
though, the vote for Speaker would be the critical first test
for a possible orange coalition; the vote for Prime Minister
would be the last hurdle to pass. Zvarych predicted that if
Kyrylenko's name was put forward -- and Kyrylenko was the
faction's choice, although Kyrylenko himself had apparently
urged the faction to wait on the President's decision for
this -- he would be elected by more than 228 votes. Because
this would be a secret ballot, votes for the Speaker would
likely come from all of OU-PSD, most of BYuT (he thought that
Regions would succeed in getting 5-7 BYuT members to stay
home or vote against) and some or all of the Communists --
they were in the Rada for "business reasons" -- all that BYuT
had to do was cut a deal with CPU leader Symonenko and for a
price, they would support the orange choice for Speaker.
The next step, adopting the 12 laws required by Yushchenko,
according to Zvarych, was foolish. All that was really
needed was the adoption of a new CabMin law - the other laws
could wait and be dealt with by the Rada later. He thought
that the orange team would need to move quickly to conclude
the coalition agreement and get the Speaker's vote done
immediately. The formal nomination of the PM would come in a
few days after that.


5. (C) Zvarych said that the main problem in implementing
this scenario and creating the orange coalition was the
President -- it was his to destroy. If Yushchenko allowed
the vote to go forward for Kyrylenko, then it would show that
the President respected the faction's wishes and was willing
to allow an orange coalition to emerge. However, Zvarych
thought that the President could order Kyrylenko, who would
obey, to go to the faction and argue for Plyushch as the
Speaker. If that happened, this would be a signal to all
that Yushchenko did not want an orange coalition; the
faction/party/bloc would collapse and the President would
lose his chance to be reelected. Zvarych believed more than
half of OU would immediately move to BYuT; he would be among
them. If Yushchenko tried to move toward a broad coalition
with Regions, only 25 OU-PSD deputies would go with him.
Even with Lytvyn Bloc support, a broad coalition would need
Communist Party support. For the President to end up in a
coalition with the Communists would be akin to committing
political hari-kari. In Zvarych's view, the President does
not understand that this would be the consequence of his
decision to push Plyushch forward as Speaker.

Tymoshenko: Plyushch Is Latest Form of Sabotage
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6. (C) Tymoshenko also met with the Ambassador on November 8,
just after she met with Baloha. She argued that Baloha and
Plyushch, with Yushchenko's encouragement, were trying to
sink the orange coalition so that they can pursue some form
of broad coalition, even if on an informal basis. Many of
her points echoed what Zvarych had already told us. She said
Baloha has been throwing up radical conditions for an orange
coalition and she had agreed to almost everything. So now,
instead of trying to push BYuT to give up and quit, Baloha
was trying to force a split within OU-PSD as a means to
sabotaging the orange government. According to Tymoshenko,
Baloha told her that on November 9 Yushchenko would ask
Kyrylenko to withdraw his candidacy for Speaker, so that the
President can nominate Plyushch instead, which will lead to
one of two outcomes. Either OU-PSD will be so unhappy that
the faction will split rendering an orange coalition
impossible or OU-PSD will get in line behind the President,
but Speaker Plyushch will make life so difficult for the
orange coalition that it will implode. Tymoshenko claimed
that Baloha has already secured Akhmetov's agreement that
some Regions MPs will vote for Plyushch to make sure he is
elected. Lutsenko has told Tymoshenko, she said, that he and
PSD will never vote for Plyushch if Regions does, but instead
will not participate in any coalition. Tymoshenko added that
she had met with Yushchenko on November 7, but she had failed
to convince him not to nominate Plyushch. Both Tymoshenko
and her deputy Oleksandr Turchynov expressed doubt about
Plyushch's ability to do the job, citing his age and lack of
engaged leadership at the NSDC.


7. (C) Tymoshenko also said that there will not be a broad
coalition even if the orange variant fails; Yushchenko

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dissolved the previous Rada convocation based on the argument
that individual MPs cannot help form the coalition. The fact
that Yushchenko has control over 8-15 MPs -- including, in
her estimation, FM Yatsenyuk, DefMin Hrytsenko, Plyushch,
former PM Yekhanurov, Sobor leader Matviyenko, UNP leader
Kostenko, and Baloha relatives Kril and Petyovka -- would not
be enough to create a broad coalition. (Note. Plyushch,
Petyovka, and Kril also have still not signed the coalition
agreement. At least one is needed to give the agreement the
226 signatures needed to register it in the Rada. End note.)
They would need the whole OU-PSD faction to meet and vote to
join a broad coalition, something Tymoshenko said would never
happen. Instead, she believed the most likely outcome would
be that there will be no coalition, Yanukovych will remain
acting prime minister for the next year, and Yushchenko and
Akhmetov will reach agreement on issues on a situational
basis. This, she added, spelled the end of Yushchenko's
political career, unless he also agreed the President should
be elected by the Rada. However, at a November 10 meeting,
Turchynov told the Ambassador that BYuT was making progress
in getting positive signals about possible support from
Lytvyn and his bloc. Turchynov said that the bloc would
prefer Kyrylenko as Speaker, but would be happier with Lytvyn
than Plyushch.


8. (C) In addition, Tymoshenko said Baloha laid out two other
conditions at the meeting. One was her agreement to changes
in the law on local self-government that would eliminate the
Cabinet's role entirely in appointing governors and raion
heads. (Note. Right now the constitution and law say that
the Cabinet makes nominations for oblast and raion
administration heads to the President, who approves or
rejects the candidates. Therefore, the legal amendment
Tymoshenko described would seem to violate the constitution,
as she argued it would. End note.) The final condition was
that she make a public pledge within the next few days that
she will back Yushchenko in the next presidential race, a
condition she has said repeatedly she will meet if the orange
government actually comes together and begins working. When
the Ambassador had a brief encounter with Baloha later the
same day, he said that there were only two issues outstanding
-- only one of which involved Tymoshenko. (Embassy Note:
Presumably, this would be the public pledge to support
Yushchenko as a presidential candidate; we suspect that the
other issue involves Yushchenko's choice for Speaker. End
Note.)

Regions - Preparing for Opposition?
--------------


9. (C) During a November 8 meeting with the Ambassador,
Regions' faction leader Raisa Bohatyreva was relaxed about
the prospect of heading into opposition, noting that the
party leadership was already thinking about how to strengthen
its party organization in preparation for the next round of
elections. She said that the party leadership was being
criticized by the more radical elements in the party for
having agreed to the pre-term elections and then "losing
them," so there was a lot of soul-searching within the party
about how to avoid that in the future. Bohatyreva, an
experienced parliamentarian, said that in her view, as the
opposition there would be less responsibility for governing,
and therefore, more time to devote to strengthening the
party. However, this position was "not acceptable" to others
in the party who were now in government, so they continued to
seek ways to ensure that a broad coalition could be
established, with Regions at its head. As a result, there
was a continuing dialogue with the presidential secretariat
-- not very lively or intense -- but it continued. According
to Bohatyreva, Regions was doing its best to be as
conciliatory as possible toward the President, in order to
give him the political ground to form a broad coalition.


10. (C) Bohatyreva thought that a democratic coalition was
still possible, but only with Plyushch rather than Kyrylenko
as Speaker. However, even if Plyushch got the Speaker post,
it was not clear that Tymoshenko would get her 228 votes. In
her view, it did not matter whether Tymoshenko became PM or
not; the one who would be vulnerable would be Yushchenko.
All three forces were thinking about the presidential
election, not the current parliament. Bohatyreva said that
if she were Yushchenko, she would concentrate on amending the
constitution, not the parliament. In her view, he should
watch, but not be responsible for forming the orange
coalition. Bohatyreva said that Regions supported the idea
of Plysych rather than Kyrylenko as the next Speaker. In
Regions' view, Plyushch is "experienced, skilled and better
able to bring powerful political forces together." In
addition, Plyushch was "closer in spirit to the President
than Kyrylenko." In an earlier meeting the same day,

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Presidential Administration Deputy Head Chaliy made the same
argument to the Ambassador, noting that Kyrylenko was too
young and inexperienced to moderate between political forces,
and that Plyushch, or Lytvyn would be able to do it. In his
view, Yushchenko had no option but to "go orange," however,
he wanted to "coopt Regions into cooperation" while he was
doing it.

Preparatory Group Off to a Bad Start
--------------


11. (C) The preparatory group that should be setting the
agenda for the new Rada, picking a date for the opening, and
agreeing to the list of committees, has started on an
inauspicious note, convening three times this week and then
closing quickly due to lack of quorum. Speaker Moroz called
the first meeting on November 6, as required by the Rada
rules of procedure, and all 10 BYuT representatives, 4 of 5
from OU-PSD (Lutsenko was out sick),Lytvyn Bloc's one rep
Ihor Sharov, Bohatyreva from Regions, and the Communists' two
representatives all attended. However, Bohatyreva and the
Communists immediately announced that their factions had not
yet been registered and that they would not participate in
the preparatory group until they were, then left. (Note.
Bohatyreva did not mention that it was Regions' own fault its
MPs were not yet registered, since they had not submitted
their documents to the CEC. End note.) The group can only
make decisions if 16 members are present; Moroz is not a
member of the group, he just calls the meeting, so there were
only 15 members in attendance (although Zvarych told us that
OU had substituted someone for Lutsenko the day he was ill so
that they would always have a quorum).


12. (SBU) Moroz moved that Communist representative and First
Deputy Speaker of the last convocation Martynyuk be named
chairman of the prep group. Tymoshenko countered by
nominating OU-PSD's Roman Zvarych. The chairman runs the
prep group and is automatically part of the 5-member
temporary presidium that will chair Rada sessions until a
Speaker is elected. The other four members of the presidium
will be put forward by the four largest factions (i.e.
everyone but the Lytvyn Bloc),so holding the chairmanship of
the prep group could give one faction a second member of the
presidium. This could be important for factions such as
OU-PSD who have talked about reordering the opening agenda to
vote on the 12 laws in the coalition agreement. Because there
was no quorum, no decision was taken.


13. (C) Zvarych argued to the Ambassador that Regions had no
legal grounds for saying they could not participate in the
preparatory group meetings until they were registered with
the CEC -- the credentials issued by the CEC merely
acknowledged the deputy-elect's status, and eligibility to
take the oath of office and participate in the first meeting
of the Rada. All were surprised by Regions' view, and when
Bohatyreva walked out of the meeting, the two Communist reps
(in Zvarych's view, not briefed about this) were surprised
and jumped up to follow her out so as not to look stupid.
Zvarych acknowledged that he had been put forward by the
orange team as head of the group, but thought that a better
choice would have been Sharov, which would give orange (BYuT
10 and OU-PSD 5) plus Lytvyn 16 out of 30 votes and a
majority. Instead, Zvarych worried that they would be
deadlocked at 15-15 for a while, with Sharov voting against
orange. Zvarych said that he could not explain Regions'
approach, but could only guess that they were trying to show
force - "without us, you can't do anything" - but that was
odd since "they were not negotiating with Orange either."


14. (C) Bohatyreva acknowledged that Regions was
procrastinating in joining the work of the preparatory group,
with the hope that OU would split from the inside or make a
solid decision to join the orange coalition. However, she
was confident that once the Regions representatives joined
the group, the necessary work of choosing an opening date for
the Rada and setting the agenda would be accomplished
quickly. Bohatyreva noted that Regions was supporting
Communist representative Martynyuk as head of the preparatory
group. However, they would need to get Lytvyn's
representative to support Regions and the Communists in order
to have a 16-14 majority. Although the orange parties were
calling for an opening session on November 20, she noted that
Regions would prefer a slightly later start date of November
23 (still within the 30-day window following the promulgation
of the official results -- November 26).


15. (C) Moroz called a second prep group meeting on November
7, to which only members of BYuT and OU-PSD showed up.
Lytvyn gave a press interview in which he called on all five
factions to hold an urgent meeting to set a date for opening

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the Rada and settle other technical aspects related to the
opening. He also expressed concern at the confrontational
nature of the prep group's first meeting. A third meeting
was called November 8, which was attended by BYuT and OU-PSD.
The meeting, like the previous two, was immediately closed
due to lack of quorum. On behalf of Regions, Justice
Minister Oleksandr Lavrynovych and MP Taras Chornovil told
the press that their faction finally submitted their
documents on November 7 and hoped to be registered on
November 9. (Embassy Note: It appears that Regions planned
to submit their documents to the CEC on November 9. End
note.) First Deputy PM Azarov said on November 8 that
Regions will begin participating in the prep group on
November 12; Bohatyreva told the Ambassador the same thing.


16. (U) Visit Embassy Kyiv's classified website:
www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/kiev.
Taylor