A Little About the Coalition and the Coalition Agreement

Will the coalition be strong? The current coalition¹ is the realization of a long-standing dream of BYuT and PR: a “broad coalition”—one that would give its participants the opportunity to resolve the widest possible range of issues, including constitutional ones. The difference lies only in the participants—if back then the communists were slotted for the role of the vilified opposition, today it’s the remnants of PR.

However, the “broadka” that has been implemented testifies more to weakness than to strength. The fact is that political power is not so much “granted” by the constitution and laws as it is “seized” through practice. Our situation differs in that, on the one hand, we have formally returned to the “parliamentary-presidential” constitution of 2004, in which the president’s functions are severely limited, while on the other hand, the presidential elections took place amid war, with high expectations placed on the president and explicit demands to expand his power. That is, great hopes are being pinned on a position much weaker than before. Mixed models (I am writing this probably for the ten-thousandth time) are inherently unstable; without conflict, as we are accustomed to understanding it, only one or the other can exist—an elected president who forms the cabinet himself, or a majority government without any president. In our situation, where the main antagonists are the “party of the president” and the “party of the prime minister,” conflict is simply inevitable. The “breadth” of the coalition—adding Tymoshenko and Lyashko to it—apparently, in the opinion of those who devised this idea, should help avoid a deadlock when the roughly equal forces of the prime minister and president come to blows. In other words, in a specific conflict, whoever manages to reach a situational agreement with Tymoshenko or Lyashko will win.

Thus, the main struggle will take place not between “power” and “opposition,” but within power itself. All this, generally speaking, would be of purely academic interest if it were not for the, as they now say, “controversial” figures of Tymoshenko and Lyashko, who would have been forced to settle for an unclear role of semi-opposition under other configurations—but as things stand, they become important players with all the consequences that entails. Does this precariousness of the coalition pose a threat, given the state of war? I think there are two related threats here. The first is the state of “uncontrollability” itself, which may embolden Putin. It would be very good if this were his main bet, since this state itself is familiar to Ukrainians, who do not perceive it as “the sky is falling.” It remains only to understand that the more “uncontrollability” there is at the top, the easier life is at the bottom—job done, so to speak. But the second threat is more unpleasant: the politically convenient and easily constructed media backdrop of “uncontrollability” could be exploited for power grabs by both supporters of reconciliation with Russia and its opponents. Both sides will inevitably begin to “restore order,” and this is already a direct threat to the lives and property of Ukrainians.

Will there be reforms? No, there will be no reforms. This is clearly written in the coalition agreement. There will only be further expansion of the state, dressed up as reforms, anti-corruption efforts, and the like. There is nothing new here (except for the fact of the agreement itself). This can be easily verified by opening the document. The method by which the future government intends to carry out reforms is extremely simple—it will create new state bodies tasked with implementing these reforms. For example, corruption, beloved by the progressive public, will be defeated by creating the “National Agency for Corruption Prevention.” There is not a word about eliminating the causes of corruption—state regulation—in there. And so it goes everywhere. Either the creation of new bodies or the strengthening of controls and other methods of the same sort, designed to soothe the nerves of the progressive public, which has devoutly believed in the efficacy of oversight since the days of the KGB.

The section “Ensuring Accelerated Economic Development” is very telling. Over the course of six points, they try to tell us in different ways that “accelerated development” is achieved through “driver industries,” understood as “high-tech industries.” All of this is to be defined, of course, by a “long-term strategy.” In other words, this is called “Skolkovo.” Behind all these points, the prospects of rather substantial budgets are visible, but as for “economic development,” let alone “accelerated,” none of it has any relation whatsoever. In the section on deregulation, of which its authors are surely proud, I found only one point that could be called correct—something that affects the motivation of an official rather than his reporting on work done—and that is the exclusion of revenues from fines and penalties from the budget’s revenue part. And that’s all. Everything else is the immortal improve, deepen, and expand. Thus, already at the level of the future coalition’s stated intentions, one can conclude that nothing “reformist” should be expected from it.

Overall, in the near future we should fear two things: Putin and the government’s fight against crises in its own reports—the state of the trade balance, the “correct” dollar exchange rate, “budget filling,” the threat of default, inflation, and hyperinflation. Everything else can be survived.