Carl Thomson is a commentator on Russian and East European affairs and was the Conservative Party candidate for Glasgow East at the 2005 General Election.
On 17th January, Ukraine will hold its fifth presidential election since it declared independence from the Soviet Union. The incumbent, Viktor Yushchenko, has the lowest opinion poll ratings ever recorded by a serving head of state. The most recent polls suggest he would have garnered just 3% of the vote had the election been held at the beginning of this month, putting him in sixth place and well behind Viktor Yanukovych, the man he defeated for the presidency in 2004. Current projections indicate that Yanukovych is not only ahead, but would remain triumphant in a run-off election with the second placed candidate and Yushchenko’s former partner in the Orange Revolution, Yulia Timoshenko.
Yushchenko’s abysmal approval ratings are in some ways an indicator of how far Ukraine has come since the days of the Soviet Union. It is easy to be a popular president when most media outlets are run by the state and competition for power is stage managed or non-existent. But we should not underestimate the real problems the country is facing. Ukraine is highly dependent on exports of raw materials and is suffering greatly as a result of the global recession. Its economy contracted by an annual rate of 16% in the third quarter of 2009.
At the same time, it is gripped by political deadlock that pre-dates the economic crisis. A botched package of constitutional amendments in the aftermath of the Orange Revolution curtailed the powers of the presidency, but without going so far as to establish a parliamentary democracy. The result has been political instability, with repeated elections leaving the president reliant on unstable and erratic coalitions made up of his most implacable opponents.
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