How did Viktor Yanukovych return to power, first as prime minister and later as president?
President Yushchenko's popularity began sliding rapidly during his first year in office. The constitutional compromise of 2004 included the transfer of some powers from president to parliament, to take effect in 2006.
Ukrainians expected Yushchenko to initiate radical reforms during this period, but he could not even contain the infighting inside his own camp. The president was fast acquiring a reputation for arriving late at all appointments, giving long-winded speeches, and general aloofness. Scandals involving some of his ministers and family members demonstrated that the Orange Revolution had not wiped out the culture of corruption and special deals among the Ukrainian elites. In dismissing Yulia Tymoshenko, the president also created a powerful political opposition, which claimed to uphold the revolution's ideals.The parliamentary elections of 2006 resulted in the Party of Regions scoring 32 percent of the vote, BYuT coming second with 22.3, and Yushchenko's Our Ukraine third with 14 percent. An Orange parliamentary majority could only be formed if Yushchenko and Tymoshenko joined forces again and also secured the support of the Socialist Party with its 5.7 percent. But Yushchenko hated the prospect of having his erstwhile ally as prime minister again. The logic of political infighting made it easier for him to invite his old political nemesis, Yanukovych, to form the government. After a long summer of bargaining, the Party of Regions, the socialists, and the communists formed a coalition with the president's Our Ukraine, and parliament approved Yanukovych as the new prime minister in August 2006. After a brief period of revolutionary idealism, Ukrainian politics reverted to the old system of unstable, pragmatic coalitions, and powerful oligarchs dictating policies behind the scenes.
Yanukovych served as prime minister from August 2006 to December 2007.
It was a chaotic, three-way power struggle between himself, president Yushchenko, and opposition leader Tymoshenko. Meanwhile, the Party of Regions engaged in bribing or blackmailing MPs elected on other party lists to cross the floor and join it. In response, an outraged President Yushchenko dissolved parliament in April 2007, apparently an unconstitutional decision, and then began illegally dismissing the Constitutional Court judges to prevent the court from overturning his decrees. After a lengthy standoff and the resignation of 150 deputies from the Orange parties, new elections were finally held in September 2007. The positions of the three main parties did not change, although the Tymoshenko Bloc increased its popularity at the expense of the presidential party and the socialists. The Party of Regions received 34.4 percent of the vote, followed by BYuT with 30.7 and Our Ukraine with 14.2.Yulia Tymoshenko became prime minister by forming a coalition with Our Ukraine and the Communist Party, but vicious infighting with the president consumed her second term. In September 2008 she ended up voting, together with Yanukovych and the communists, for a bill further limiting the president's powers and facilitating his impeachment. In response, Yushchenko dissolved parliament again and called snap elections. However, parliament refused to fund the elections, and Tymoshenko challenged the president's decision in a regional administrative court, which the president then dissolved. As the Ukrainian leaders engaged in these vindictive political games, the country was being drawn into the whirlwind of the 2008 global financial crisis. A new gas war with Russia only aggravated the economic slowdown.
The 2010 presidential elections were held amidst the economic crisis and widespread popular disillusionment with the Orange politicians. Yushchenko came in fifth in the initial round, with an embarrassing 5.45 percent of the vote. The once-disgraced Yanukovych then defeated his rival Tymoshenko in the subsequent runoff, capturing 48.95 percent of the vote to her 45.47. Voters apparently associated Tymoshenko's premiership with the economic downturn, while Yanukovych's more distant one was remembered as a time of relative prosperity. Still, it was a close election and, like most Ukrainian elections after independence, it demonstrated a political divide between the vote-rich southeast and the west. The center was a deal-breaker, as usual: Tymoshenko won a majority there, but only a small one.
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