DESPITE a recount underway in the Crimea, there seems little doubt that the pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych has triumphed in the Ukraine’s presidential election. Outside monitors have declared the poll free and fair despite the narrow margin by which Yanukovych defeated Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
Yanukovych has called on Tymoshenko to resign but is thinking anyway of calling a snap general election, as is now his right. The latter course would be the wiser because it would hopefully bring to an end the divisions that threaten Ukraine’s stability. Voters may choose to repeat their endorsement of Yanukovych by backing his candidates or they might seek to balance the presidency with an opposition-led Parliament. Unfortunately even this, however, may not work since two years ago, there were messy changes to the constitution divesting the presidency of some of its powers. These are widely credited with the stalemate between the outgoing President Viktor Yuschenko and his one-time protégé Tymoshenko. What must not happen again is for crowds of the prime minister’s supporters to take to the streets in a replay of the 2004 Orange revolution. There were good grounds then for believing that the presidential ballot had been rigged. There are no such grounds now, even if the successful candidate is the same man, Yanukovych.
The Ukraine has to learn to live with its divided history and stop the squabbling that frittered away its economic chances before the recession made its problems even more severe. Continued confrontation will merely make a bad situation worse. And besides Russia may currently be in a better position to help Ukraine than the West. It depends on how the Kremlin now chooses to play the success of its candidate. If Moscow wants to advance the case that Ukrainians are better off within its sphere of influence, then it has to be both subtle and generous.
Meanwhile, the Europeans are quietly breathing a sigh of relief at the likelihood that Russia will no longer cut off their gas supplies, because of another money dispute with Kiev. Washington too is quietly pleased that for the moment at least, a potential flash point has been removed. George W. Bush’s intemperate demands for early Ukrainian membership of NATO did nothing to assuage Kremlin fears that what was supposed to be a defensive alliance was now parking its tanks on Russia’s front lawn.
Brussels and Washington should not abandon Ukraine Russia’s current economic reflexes do not promise a solution to Kiev’s financial troubles. If Yanukovych can establish some degree of political stability and Russia backs his administration with generous aid, then the West can also contribute both capital and technical expertise. This would head off the danger that even deeper political polarization in Ukraine could overflow into East-West confrontation. Yanukovych must, therefore, make it clear that his administration will embrace the interests of all Ukrainians, whether of Ukrainian or Russian extraction.
The politics of fear
EXCERPTS from an editorial in New York Times on Tuesday:
An election is coming, so the Republicans are trying to scare Americans by making it appear as if the Democrats don’t care about catching or punishing terrorists.
It’s nonsense, of course, but effective. The be-very-afraid approach helped former President George W. Bush ram laws through Congress that chipped away at Americans’ rights. He used it to get re-elected in 2004. Now the Republicans are playing the fear card for the fall elections.
The most recent target is the Obama administration’s handling of the failed Christmas Day bomber, particularly its decision (an absolutely correct one) to have the FBI arrest and interrogate the suspect and file federal terrorism charges rather than throw him into a military prison where the Republicans seem to expect that he would be given no rights, questioned and held without charges.
Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, suggested — without any evidence — that vital intelligence was lost by that approach. Sen. Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, told Politico that he wants to block financing for civilian trials of terrorism suspects so Republicans can brag about it this fall. He said, “the core question is whether the attorney general of the United States ought to be in charge of the war on terror.”
As McConnell should know perfectly well, that is not the question at all, core or otherwise. The Obama administration has embraced the idea of using military tribunals for some terrorism suspects. The Christmas bombing suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was arrested in the United States. The American justice system does not allow people arrested in the United States for serious offenses to be detained and held without access to an attorney.
It is good that the administration is pushing back.
In a five-page letter to McConnell, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. said that the handling of Abdulmutallab followed the sensible practices of presidents of both parties. Although Abdulmutallab stopped talking at one point, he has since begun cooperating, according to administration officials. Law enforcement agents know that many defendants talk after being told of their right to remain silent, Holder noted.
Republicans like to say that Obama is giving new rights to terrorists. But Holder’s letter noted that the Bush administration prosecuted more than 300 people on terrorism-related charges in federal courts without a whiff of complaint from those same Republicans.
He said those included Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber; Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted of involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks; the man charged with plotting to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge; and another who schemed to bomb the Los Angeles airport.
The Republican propaganda is a distraction from the real issue: That the counterterrorism system is malfunctioning more than eight years after the Sept. 11 attacks. Like many of the nation’s other problems, Obama inherited this one. For eight years, Congress failed in its legal duty to oversee the intelligence community and the basic operational tasks of the Department of Homeland Security and correct the abusive system of detention at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere that made our country more vulnerable, not less.
Congress should be helping the president fix those problems, not piling up sound bites for November and trying to bring that shameful detention system home.
