Opposition. Chances. Just a cold calculus

The Ukrainian opposition has finally consolidated. In all appearance, completely and entirely. Last Saturday after the meeting Arsenii Yatseniuk told the journalists that Front of Changes and Fatherland will have the single party list for the parliamentary elections.

In other words, Front of Changes will not participate in the elections and Yatseniuk and some of his party fellows will join the ranks of Fatherland. “According to the law, blocs cannot participate in the elections. That is why some people will have to leave our party and resume their membership after the election,” Yatseniuk explained.

Why did Yatseniuk agree to consolidate with Tymoshenko’s party? First of all, he will be crowned with laurels of the leader of the consolidated opposition. Though Yulia Tymoshenko will be the first in the party list, Yurii Lutsenko will take the second place, and Yatseniuk will be the third, he will take the first place as soon as the list is registered in the Central Election Commission since convicted Tymoshenko and Lutsenko will not be registered.

Secondly, it is an elementary cold calculus. “Everyone understands that there is no other way out but consolidation,” member of BYuT Ostap Semerak shared in the conversation with The Day. “It is impossible to resist Yanukovych’s team one by one. The authorities will be afraid of a large political force. It will be a constraint for them. We agreed that the politicians will not steal marches on each other. Yatseniuk will have large possibilities to form his quota in the list. It means that the consolidation has only advantages, there are no disadvantages in it.”

However, skeptics predict that the process of creation and harmonization of the single party list will be problematic. There will be not so many people who will enter the parliament in it.

The consolidation will bring certain risks to Fatherland. Tymoshenko’s party might accept Yatseniuk as the new leader. It seems that everyone has already put up with the thought that Tymoshenko will not leave the prison in the near future. Nature abhors the vacuum; the party needs a new leader. Turchynov does not have any except Yatseniuk. As it often happens in the Ukrainian politics, many sincere Tymoshenko’s supporters might become turncoats and adapt to the new “daddy.”

Meanwhile, Tymoshenko has been accused of three murders. Except Yevhen Shcherban’s murder they are also trying to pin on her the murders of Oleksandr Momot and Vadym Hetman. Tymoshenko has been accused of being related to Kushnir’s gang and its leader who supposedly executed Lady Yu’s commissions.

Thus Tymoshenko will be soon blamed for killing president Kennedy. There is an impression that prosecutor Renat Kuzmin is seriously trying to pin on her all the cold cases over the last years.

Tymoshenko called those declarations absurd that “cannot be analyzed, appealed against or laughed at.”

“When Yanukovych encharged his people with a task to start political repressions against me, I joked that they would accuse me of a murder soon. Now my joke has come true. We could be ironic about the attempts of the Prosecutor General to pin Yevhen Shcherban’s murder on me. We could be sarcastic about my participation in Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston’s deaths. We could… but we should not. The dictatorship is ridiculous and terrible at the same time. There are fewer and fewer people laughing at the new dictator since they do not know whether to laugh or cry,” reported the press office of BYuT.

Meanwhile, when speaking last Friday on Inter TV Channel Renat Kuzmin confirmed that Ukraine and Germany are negotiating on Tymoshenko’s medical treatment in Germany.

There is certain legal schizophrenia present. On the one hand, they pin murders on Tymoshenko and promise her life imprisonment; on the other hand, they consider a possibility to treat her abroad and declare their readiness to provide Tymoshenko with any medical help.

“Tymoshenko will be treated but she will stay in prison. She will be left in the cage but healthy,” political expert Vadym Karasiov assumed in his conversation with The Day. “If it is not the gas case, it will be something else. Essential for them is to stain her reputation.

“Europe is worried about Tymoshenko and offers treatment. At every possible occasion they emphasize that Tymoshenko must be released. That is why they have to strike a crushing blow with criminal acts saying, look who you are protecting. All the more so, Europe realizes how capitals and fortunes were made back in the 1990s. However, our people do not always understand that Europe does not protect Tymoshenko, but political competition and justice.

“As for the murders, it is a hint: you’d better go, otherwise we will use more serious arguments. They can release her but they will limit her political activity. However, Tymoshenko understands perfectly well that if she leaves the country, it will mean a political death for her.”

So, Yulia Tymoshenko is facing quite a difficult choice: physical health and political death or political life and physical torment. What will she choose? We hope that she will choose health since politics is not the whole life.