Tymoshenko release probable very soon? Maybe so

Two days ago, as my twitter and Facebook followers will have seen, I highlighted this from the presidential website.

It is official recognition from the President that a formal plea from numerous female RADA MPs have petitioned for Tymoshenko’s pardon and the petition has been formally recorded and recognised.

It is not the first petition for her pardon the president has received – there have been many – but it is the first I have seen acknowledged in such a way.

The following day, it was followed by a similar appeal by historical members of the Ukrainian diplomatic corps.

Previously I forecast that Yuri Lutsenko would be released on the occasion of the Orthodox Easter, but he was released 3 weeks earlier than my crystal ball declared.  That said, I made that prediction at the beginning of February, so perhaps it was a little smudged when I gazed in it.

Could it have been so smudged that I mistook the release of Lutsenko for Tymoshenko and yet the timing between 28th April and 5 May will still prove to be accurate?

It certainly wouldn’t be a bad time to do it for numerous reasons, if that is the decision.

Obviously the symbolism of releasing a woman due to an all female petition, together with if not the resurrection of an omnipresent – the rehabilitation (in part or in full) of a foe by a president many consider likes to think of himself as omnipresent, could sit very well with the Orthodox faithful during the Orthodox Easter.

Symbolism aside, the United Opposition are in something of a mess when it comes to leadership and discipline, Kyrylenko resigning as Deputy Leader of the United Opposition yesterday and MPs leaving, and yet another enormous ego in the shape of Tymoshenko’s entering the daily fray would probably prove more divisive than unifying for them in the medium term – possibly immediately.

Particularly so as there will be those dreading her release amongst the United Opposition just as there were Lutsenko’s release – and for good reason when it comes to personal ambitions.  For them the question is whether Tymoshenko is indeed a spent force amongst opposition parliamentary politics or not.

It would also allow 18 months for any warm (be it very warm or lukewarm) reception from the public she may receive upon release to have cooled greatly prior to presidential elections in 2015, as well as defining her reception amongst an opposition that has moved on somewhat, without her.

Naturally it would all-but guarantee the signing of the EU Association Agreement and DCFTA in Vilnius in November, despite many other demands Ukraine may fail to fulfill in their entirety to the EU time line.

It is though,  an agreement document that will forever go down in Ukrainian history with the signature of President Yanukovych thereon.  Something history will never be able to deny him.  History will equally record his failure to engineer its success.   Let us not underestimate ego.

Perhaps most importantly, and therefore the most unlikely to be mentioned immediately by many, for Yanukovych’s reelection ambitions, should the agreements get signed, it may very well help prevent the further courting of a fairly disgruntled traditionally Party of Regions biased oligarchy with potential new lovers in both Klitschko and Yatseniuk – something that has recently been happening albeit tentatively.

None will back Tymoshenko if released and able to stand for election – “anybody but her” is still very much the current thinking amongst the vast majority of that particular clique.

It maybe that her release, in true Ukrainian style, is done at the very last minute prior to the Vilnius Summit in November – but I doubt that.  If not at Easter, then possibly during the summer RADA recess.  If not by then, then probably not prior to the Vilnius Summit at all.

Whatever the case, the announcement on the presidential website does raise speculation – if not necessarily the odds – of it happening soon.

I will certainly not need to sit down due to shock, should her release come far sooner than most have anticipated – not that on-going investigations would stop.

It also has to be said, I will also not be surprised if her reception amongst the opposition parties and many of their supporters is far cooler than she may expect either.

Lutsenko circus nears its finale

Yesterday, as per the script, the prison sentence of Yuri Lutsenko was upheld by The Higher Specialised Court of Ukraine for Civil and Criminal Cases.

Now, as per the script, it falls to the President Yanukovych to release Lutsenko on humanitarian grounds due to ill health, negating the need for Lutsenko to ask for a pardon which he will not do.

It also follows that his conviction would remain if released from prison on humanitarian grounds.

For the sake of the continuing circus performance, one has to suspect Easter would be a good time for the President to intervene and have him released.  So possibly around 5th May?  It would fall in rather nicely with the EU time line to see some “progress”.

Anyway, the circus performance must go on, even if for just a little longer with respect to Lutsenko – After all it would simply be boring to just have him finish his sentence in 2014 now wouldn’t it?

Privitising State/municipal print media – Ukraine

There were an awful lot of low profile but interesting things said at the Party of Regions Council meeting at which both President Yanukovych and Prime Minister Azarov were present on 21st March – some of which made it to the President’s website.

So many in fact, I may return to the statements and comments of the meeting over the next few days.

However, today, I will pick up on the issue of the privitisation of the State and municipal print media – a necessary privitisation in line with the commitments of Ukraine to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).

It would seem the President is rather tired of waiting for this to happen and has issued a direct instruction for this matter to be legislatively prepared and submitted to the RADA by 5th April.

Hmmm!

Firstly, it is of course quite right that Ukraine honour its international commitments – but -

The President’s instruction calls for the input of journalists, editors and professional associations for this legislative bill.  Today is 22nd March.  Unless there has been considerable work on this bill already – including their input – then the time line would seem either impossible to achieve, or the result of the legislation will leave much to be desired.

That said, as is so often the case, Ukraine is not reinventing the wheel here – it is not the only FSU/Warsaw Pact nation to have to deal with this issue.  Many have successfully managed it already.  Models and legislation therefore already exist amongst Ukraine’s neighbours – albeit every nation is slightly different.

Arguably this privitisation is one of the easiest and less politically fraught ways of displaying progress in media reforms – as demanded by both the EU and CoE respectively, whilst not forcing the oligarchy to hold media assets that are not part of their core business to save the media falling under the control of the opposition – if indeed they have that much interest in owning it.

After all, what exactly does the State and municipal print media produce that could rival the TV, radio and on-line media assets controlled by the oligarchy?  What immediate danger is there in privitising those who, in the main,  produce forms, books and information pamphlets – particularly when any owner of a newly privitised print company will be needing the national and local government work to survive whilst they try and expand into other areas of print?

But therein is the problem for would-be owners when this privitisation comes to pass.

Buying such entities leaves a heavy reliance on the patriarchal benevolence of central and/or local government to have continued State and municipal work come your way.

Given the issues facing print media in general via the competition from TV, radio and the Internet, what chance of meaningful and profitable expansion?

In short, unless you are guaranteed a lucrative central/local government contract – for example the production of biometric passports, or the Odessa City Administration contract for forms and pamphleteering – why would you entertain buying a privitised State print entity?  You would surely have to sit very comfortably within the existing national or local patriarchy to entertain the idea.

That being so, whilst it is an international commitment of Ukraine to privatise the State and municipal print media, any successful privitisation would seem destined to simply give control of the State/municipality entities to vested interests via nothing more than an intermediary/shell in practice.

You wonder whether, perhaps, such entities could have been spun off to become something similar to a “University Press” – possibly under an LLC protective umbrella for respective universities – and then such municipal funds spent for books, pamphlets and forms et al., could at least then be used to off-set the costs of – or indeed expand – the universities in local cities and towns.

It is just one thought that comes to mind without spending no more than 5 seconds contemplating the issue.  If I gave it more thought, undoubtedly other, and perhaps better,  proposals would come to mind.

Anyway – two immediate issues come to mind.  The legislative time table, and lack of time to arrive at anything resembling decent legislation – and secondly, who will want to buy such entities without some form of long term guarantee of continued work from the State/local government?

If such guarantees are forthcoming, then these entities will most certainly be bought by those who sit snuggly within the patriarchy.  Is that then privitisation – or cronyism/corruption adopted under the cloak of promises to the EU and Council of Europe?

e-Diplomacy, Facebook Twitterati et al – Yanukovych to go on-line

There is a lot said about e-diplomacy these days.

It is a constant theme emanating from William Hague, Carl Bildt, Stefan Fule, Sergey Lazarov, Ann-Marie Slaughter and numerous other high-flying politicians and diplomats who follow me on twitter and vice versa.

The same can be said for Facebook and in the case of Russia and Ukraine, VK also. – To some lesser extent,  LinkedIn.

Quite right – why wait for the media to misquote you when you can write yourself in real time and reach your dedicated audience.

However, it is not my intention to discuss e-diplomacy or e-politics per se – at least not on an international scale.

With respect to Ukraine, the e-political and e-diplomacy world is dominated by the opposition.  My twitter is followed by Oleh Tyahnybok, Anatoli Grytsenko amongst numerous other opposition members and my Facebook is followed by close to 100 MPs – mostly opposition.

That said, there are also Party Regions MPs who follow me on twitter and Facebook – some of which are very active in the social media realm – like Sergey Tigipko and Yuri Miroshnychenko.

What is noticeable about them all – including the international personalities I mentioned at the start – is that they all write their own tweets, entries and comments on other peoples pages.

And?

Well it seems that President Yanukovych is going to enter twitter and Facebook according to his press people.  Jolly good!  It doesn’t take long to write a 140 character message on twitter – in fact it takes some thought to keep within the character limit.

The question is, will President Yanukovych write his own Facebook entries and tweets?  If not there really is little point.

When I tweet Carl Bildt and @carlbildt replies – I know it is Carl Bildt who did reply.  When I tweet Sergey Tigipko or Ann-Marie Slaughter, I know it is they who reply.

Likewise, given some of the banal and inane (but obviously insider) exchanges on Facebook between Ukrainian politicians, it is quite clear that the RADA people write their own entries there too.

The point is on these media sites, you expect to talk to those named as holding the accounts – not a hireling who will keep comments, statements and replies politically correct and squeaky clean.  Errors, misspellings and the occasional gaff/faux pas are not the exclusive domain of the hoy polloy.  Everybody makes them.

Public media “gaffs” are not restricted to President Yanukovych in the public realm – as many Ukrainian politicians Facebook time lines and twitter histories will display.  But that to me is OK.  It is in fact human, and not something resembling a “ministry approved” generic statement.

So, when it comes to public speaking, a gaff-prone President is likely to write at the very least, misspelled and occasionally erroneous things – if his accounts are to be written by him.  If they are perfect in content and grammar each and every time, it is highly unlikely that they are being written personally – and therefore what is the point?  It would be just as easy to continue to read the carefully written, edited and politically correct official website entries.

Thus I am actually hoping to see a few spelling errors and the occasional factual mishap – not so I can deride him for being uneducated, or a lair or generally intellectually retarded (he doesn’t need to be on Facebook or twitter for that to happen) – but because given his history of gaffs, the occasional err on twitter and Facebook would provide far more faith it is indeed him, personally, writing the words I read – and that is the entire point of me following anyone.

As the President is not somebody I necessarily associate with cognitive speed or incisiveness (though I don’t think him stupid either) – it will be the substance and not the form or grammar that will be of interest in any move into a fast moving e-diplomacy/e-political world – though I suspect many will castrate the form and ignore the substance – given form over substance is not only a philosophy, but a way of life for many in Ukraine.

A non-story that is a story – The missing Focus edition

Today I should perhaps be writing about yesterday’s EU-Ukraine summit – so of course I won’t be – as that will be covered to within an inch of its life by everybody else.

Instead, we will return to the freedom of the media, a tired but worthy subject and one that was no doubt touched upon directly or otherwise at the EU-Ukraine summit.

This article appeared in the weekly Focus magazine, issue number 8, 2013 – albeit temporarily:

The question is why temporarily?

The subject is the annual cost of President Yanukovych to Ukraine during 2012, in respect to his role as President.  These are not the hidden costs of lackluster leadership, failure to attract FDI, corruption, favouritism, cronyism et al, but things like security, transport and the normal expenses you would expect any head of state in incur at the expense of their nation.

A quick conversion to Euro would, according to the Focus figures, be approximately Euro 94 million.  I use the Euro simply because it is just over UAH 10 to Euro 1 and it makes the slightly more than UAH 1 billion spent far easier to understand.

A huge sum of money to spend on a head of state?  I honestly don’t know, but appears that way.  Particularly so if we are to compare it to President Kucha’s last term in office where his costs to the nation as President were never more than 50% of the above costs that are claimed by Focus.

That said, we are talking about a time lapse of almost 10 years between today and the end of the Kuchma presidency, and I can’t find any costs for the Yushenko presidency at the time of writing.  What is certain is that it is simply not a matter of inflation – though I also don’t remember President Kuchma globe trotting quite as much as the current president does – however perhaps he did and I simply forget.

Anyway, within 24 hours of this particular issue of Focus going out – it was recalled.  The on-line link to this particular page was also broken leaving any would-be reader with the “Error 404″ message.

Unfortunately it appears that whomever was ultimately responsible for this decision has failed to realise that when something is published on line, removing it entirely is an impossibility as somebody somewhere will have saved such an image as soon as they saw it.  Likewise once a hard copy of the magazine has been sold, recalling every issue printed is also impossible.

Gene and bottle and all that.

So why was it recalled and links broken to this particular article on line?

Was it an editorial decision because the numbers are seriously flawed in some way, and this only came to light after publication?  That would show a degree of integrity far beyond that associated with the Ukrainian press, not withstanding the costs of recalling all printed issues and loss of sales.  Far easier to make a correction in the next issue – although that is not something the Ukrainian press are good at either – admitting when they get it wrong.

The other alternative is that pressure was put on Focus to withdraw the printed issue and break the on line links to this particular article.  Not that such action would necessarily make one conclude the figures quoted are right or wrong, as in either case, few would be surprised if pressure over such an article was put upon the owner and/or editor of Focus in such times of financial strife and severe imbalances between rich and poor across the nation – notwithstanding making President Yanukovych even more unpopular.

It seems, as of the time of writing, Focus is in a state of something similar to purdah – thus no mention of this event is being made whatsoever.  As such, whilst nobody likes to admit their mistakes, it seems more likely that this censorship of the media is not self-censorship due to error but due to external pressure.

As such, today, rather than ruminating over the EU-Ukraine summit as many will be doing, I will raise this issue instead – whilst allowing you to see what was briefly in the public domain via Focus and now back in the public domain here – whether it be accurate or not is down to the reader to either discredit or add substantiate.  I make no claims to the accuracy of the numbers quoted.

Health priorities – Ukraine

Well – following on from this post a few days ago, we have this announcement from Ukraine.

How transparent and auditable this will be remains to be seen – I suspect it is will incredibly opaque unfortunately.

One is also reminded that “prevention is better than cure” as the saying goes – the problem with prevention is that it is incredibly hard to audit or measure effectively.

International collection of child support coming to Ukraine….maybe

Not a post that will please the absent parents in Ukraine failing in their obligations to support children and spouses they have left behind in other nations – but -

On 25th December Viktor Yanukovych submitted to the RADA bill Number 0010.  This bill is designed to ratify the International Recovery of Child Support and other forms of Family Maintenance.

Very good – unless you happen to be a parent/spouse indebted.

However, the explanatory note accompanying this bill, whilst necessarily recognising the decisions of foreign courts and their execution over recovery of funds in such matters, does not foresee any costs involved or shouldered by Ukraine.

So we have a proposed law agreeing to cooperate with other States over outstanding family maintenance with an agreement to assist in such legal execution of such foreign court decisions – and yet what appears to be no actual effective administrative method to do so when considering the explanatory note accompanying the proposed law states very clearly there will be no cost to the Ukrainian State – and any official spending any administrative time on such matters is naturally a cost to the Ukrainian budget.

It seems to be yet another “paper compliance” with no effective implementation strategy whatsoever.

Why am I not surprised?

It also seems quite ironic that Ukraine will ratify such a position when Ukraine cannot even enforce its own family court decisions over maintenance.

Ukraine – Absent!

Much headline space yesterday was given to the cancellation of President Yanukovych’s visit to President Putin and short notice – at such short notice in fact, that the Ukrainian press corps had arrived in Moscow to discover that the visit had been canceled at the last moment.

Media speculation runs rife as to the reason for the late cancellation – was it due to the telephone call initiated by President Barroso of the EU to President Yanukovych, during which he may have persuaded him to leave any formal announcements or signing of deals with Russia or the Customs Union until after the 25th February EU-Ukraine summit?   Or was it, as has been officially stated by both sides, that the documents and deals that were to be signed are not yet ready to be signed?

After all, every president likes to have something to show from an official visit, be they the visitor or the host.

Maybe it was a bit of both?

However, what has not got the media coverage, is that on the same day as the Presidents of Ukraine and Russia were due to meet and didn’t – there were also meetings of the Eurasian Economic Council, the Supreme Council of the Customs Union and Common Economic Space, EurAsEc summit and the CSTO summit – all of which Ukraine can attend in various guises - but attended none!

What to make of that?