Reformers Join the Ukrainian Cabinet : Politics: But many in Old Guard remain, and if economic conditions do not approve, ‘kamikaze’ government could fall.

Market reformers took the shaky helm of Ukraine’s crisis-ridden economy Tuesday as the Parliament approved a new government with an uncertain future.

Opposition leaders welcomed the new Cabinet of Ministers as a step forward but said its members may be “kamikazes” fated for short careers if Ukraine’s economy continues to deteriorate.

Ihor Jukhnovsky, a liberal academic who once led the opposition bloc in Parliament, was confirmed as first deputy prime minister. Viktor Pinzenyk, a scathing critic of the previous government’s economic policy, replaced Valentin Simonenko as economics minister.

The new appointees--approved by 296 of the 384 legislators, with 62 opposed and the rest abstaining--will fill only 10 of 34 total Cabinet-level positions; two-thirds of the members of the previous government retained their posts. In a move that should reassure foreign countries, those staying include the popular defense minister, Konstantin Morozov, and the foreign minister, Anatoly Zlenko.

“We have grown accustomed to working with them,” one Kiev-based Western diplomat said.

When challenged by a deputy during the confirmation proceedings, Prime Minister Leonid Kuchma blamed the dearth of new faces on the lack of qualified candidates; he expressed disillusionment over the reluctance of his former colleagues in industry to take on government posts.

That reluctance may be explained by what Kuchma himself called “the catastrophic state” of the Ukrainian economy when he replaced Vitold Fokin as prime minister two weeks ago.

But Tuesday, as Kuchma urged lawmakers to approve his nominees, he painted a somewhat different picture. “There is still time for radical economic changes,” he said, arguing that a combination of market-driven mechanisms and state regulations could return production to 1990 levels by the middle of next year.

That more optimistic assessment contrasted with the prime minister’s devastating attack on the “Mafia,” the popular name for the amorphous association of organized crime, corrupt officials and “speculators” that seems to control many levers of the post-Soviet economy. Kuchma called for “extraordinary” countermeasures.

His attack on the Mafia and his implicit admission of the existence of official corruption was a first coming from such a highly placed official in Ukraine.

All in all, many reformers in Parliament were pleased with the semi-new Cabinet. “The number of ‘regressives’ has stayed the same,” said Ihor Derkach, an opposition legislator. “But the number of progressives has increased.”

Viktor Vovk, an independent political analyst who watched the confirmation proceedings from the observers’ gallery, said such satisfaction was unjustified. “All of the economic portfolios were taken by the opposition,” he said, referring to the first deputy prime minister and the economics minister, as well as the new ministers of foreign trade, manufacturing, agriculture, energy and the environment. “But the Parliament is still dominated by the industrialist lobby, and they only want economic stabilization, not economic reforms.”