Why does ground for the revanche remain?

On March 31, the “opposition government,” consisting of former Party of Regions members and current members of the Opposition Bloc, was presented at the Olympic National Sports Complex. Borys Kolesnikov was elected “prime minister,” Vadym Rabinovych “deputy prime minister for control of the law-enforcement bodies’ activity,” Natalia Korolevska “deputy prime minister for social policy and pension reform,” Oleksandr Vilkul “deputy prime minister for industrialization and restoration of Donbas,” Mykhailo Dobkin “deputy prime minister for reform of local self-government,” Olena Kolesnikova “minister of education, culture, science, family and youth,” and so on. All the faces are very well-known, since a lot of them were part of Yanukovych’s team, which plundered and corrupted the country for several years, and also prepared an internal platform for the external aggression from Russia. The Party of Regions grip on power culminated in the commitment of mass crimes against the Euromaidan protesters, which ended in the shooting of the Heavenly Hundred.

The responsibility for the threat of the former Yanukovych team’s return also lies with the incumbent government, which did not display sufficient enthusiasm in the investigation of its criminal, economic, and political offences. Thus, according to report of the Council of Europe’s International Advisory Panel, there has been no progress in the investigation of crimes committed on Maidan in Kyiv in 2013-14. According to the members of the panel, the resources of the Prosecutor General’s Office, allocated for the investigation of these events, were extremely insufficient, and there also was no continuity in the management of the investigation by the Prosecutor General’s Office, since three successive prosecutors general held the office in the meantime, and the unwillingness of the MIA and SBU to cooperate had a negative effect on the investigation. Besides, the inactivity of our law-enforcement system led to the fact that Western sanctions have been lifted for four of Yanukovych’s accomplices, and the Prosecutor General’s Office has only two months to keep the sanctions against three or four more persons.

But instead of investigating and proving the illegal activity of former Party of Regions members during Yanukovych’s presidency, they were given an opportunity to get into the new Verkhovna Rada. They got 9.43 percent of votes at the parliamentary election. Back then, after the election, MP Borys Filatov said in one of the interviews: “I think that oblast headquarters of Petro Poroshenko Bloc carried out no activity to counteract the Opposition Bloc in relation to party lists... There is an impression that this all was fixed, because there were a lot of queer replacements in election commissions at the past moment. There was no proper agitation. Petro Poroshenko Bloc candidates that were destined to fail ran in Kryvy Rih. Moreover, when they lost, they did not question their loss.”

And now the blue-and-white party has got a real opportunity to return to the big politics, considerably improving their popularity ratings at that. For them the current socio-economic and military-political situation in Ukraine is advantageous from the viewpoint of future local elections. Against the backdrop of the events in the east of the country, the government is carrying out an inefficient economic policy, and reforms are impeded. This enables the former Party of Regions members to ride a wave of populism and seek revenge, ensuring serious support among the population. “Our work will be done through concrete legislative proposals and programs, on whose realization we will insist before the incumbents. We will take part in their implementation, and we will certainly implement them when we win the election,” said Vilkul at the presentation of the “shadow government.”

The recent popularity ratings, too, testify to the ability of the blue-and-whites to regain power. Thus, the Razumkov Center shows that, given the present considerable slack in the ratings of most political forces, the most popular remain the Petro Poroshenko Bloc (14.3 percent), Self-Reliance (9.3 percent), and the Opposition Bloc (6.8 percent). Moreover, 17.7 percent of respondents were not prepared to make a choice, while 22.1 percent said that they would not vote. It is these population groups that will be targeted by the Opposition Bloc in the election race.

In these conditions society needs an alternative political force, which would oppose the incumbent government but would not endanger Ukraine’s statehood. Who could claim this niche? “We are forming a group of MPs which will be the pro-Ukrainian democratic opposition, dissenting with the president’s and government’s policies,” said MP Vitalii Kuprii who split from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc past week together with three supporters. “I am convinced that as soon as we take shape, the process will start rolling, and many will join us, there will be a lot of surprises inside the coalition. You know that the ‘Dnipro team’ is big and strong. Our withdrawal from the PPB and formation of a new opposition group should nip in the bud any intentions and desires to flirt with the former representatives of the Yanukovych regime.” According to Kuprii, the Opposition Bloc is opposition in name only; in fact, it is a pro-Russian fifth column, which has discredited itself. “That is why the return of Regions to power threatens the state as such.”