Ukrainian Parliament Dismisses Reformist Prime Minister

An alliance of Communists and parties controlled by oligarchs ousted Ukraine’s reformist prime minister Thursday, jeopardizing efforts to distance the country from its powerful and jealous neighbor, Russia, and draw it closer to the West.

Parliament cast an overwhelming vote of no confidence in Viktor Yushchenko, a 47-year-old banker who during 16 months in office helped reverse the economy’s decline and post the first growth since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“He gave us hope, and he was just getting started,” lamented Taisa Bernovych, a 68-year-old retired chemical engineer who was one of an estimated 12,000 people who protested outside parliament in behalf of the prime minister.

Yushchenko’s opponents accused him of refusing to compromise with lawmakers on economic policy. “It was nonsense for him to rely on the minority, while expecting the majority to pass legislation,” said Hyrhoriy Surkis of the Social Democratic Party.

Yushchenko and his Cabinet will continue as a caretaker administration for as long as two months, until a new government is formed.

The ouster, by a vote of 263 to 69, is the latest chapter in Ukraine’s political turmoil and another sign of growing opposition to President Leonid D. Kuchma, a former Soviet factory boss who has led the nation for most of the years since independence in 1991.

Kuchma nominated Yushchenko for prime minister after being reelected president in November 1999 and charged the popular former Central Bank chairman with fixing Ukraine’s dismal reputation for corruption, economic backwardness and fiscal profligacy. Kuchma was seeking Western support at the time, distancing himself from Moscow and pushing for possible membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Since then, however, Kuchma has found his standing considerably eroded in the West and at home.

For the past five months, the president has battled allegations that he ordered the death of muckraking journalist Georgi Gongadze. Two FBI forensic experts arrived in Ukraine this week to confirm that a headless corpse discovered in November is that of Gongadze. This month, the United States granted political asylum to a former Kuchma bodyguard, Maj. Mykola Melnichenko, who has tape recordings in which Kuchma allegedly suggests that Gongadze be killed.

The scandal has threatened to topple Kuchma, who has increasingly relied on the country’s clannish industrialists--a handful of powerful financiers who control business empires and political parties--for support.

“Geopolitically, for the Communists and the oligarchs, a tilt toward Eurasia [Russia] is more natural,” Mykola Tomenko, director of the Independent Institute of Politics in Kiev, wrote this week. “For the Communists, this is an ideological position. For the oligarchs, it’s a matter of daily business. Their efforts to work in European markets end badly as a rule. There are criminal charges against many of them in different countries, and they’ve become, in essence, unable to even visit the West.”

Yushchenko has been heavily backed by Western countries, and the Communists, oligarchs and Kuchma’s circle have seen a U.S. plot behind the Gongadze scandal. The fact that the prime minister’s wife is an American citizen has fueled such speculation.

“For months, they have been trying to convince the people that America is behind the tape scandal because the U.S. wants to make Viktor Yushchenko president,” said Yulia Mostova, a political reporter for the weekly Zerkalo Tyzhdnia in Kiev, the capital. “Giving Melnichenko asylum simply strengthened this idea. That is why it turned out to be an effective provocation against the premier.”

Yushchenko is by far Ukraine’s most popular politician, largely because he has taken aim at the cronyism that is rampant in the economy and government. Many analysts have pegged him as a powerful contender for president in the next election, scheduled for 2004.

Kuchma is believed to have increasingly seen Yushchenko as a serious rival, especially as the crowds in central Kiev calling for the president’s impeachment have at the same time rallied in favor of the prime minister. As the no-confidence vote neared, Kuchma pointedly withheld his endorsement, remarking only lukewarmly that “the government’s resignation is not in Ukraine’s interests today.”

Yushchenko, who in recent days rejected demands from the oligarchs that he put their allies in key government posts, vowed to return to political life.

“I am convinced that our efforts were not for nothing,” he said after the vote. “I will continue to pursue the policies I proposed by all available means and methods permitted by democracy and the principles of public politics. I am not leaving politics. I am going so as to return.”