2005 - President Viktor Yushchenko
The Kuchma political crisis was complicated by the successful efforts of a coalition of centrist and left-wing deputies to oust reform-oriented Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko. Yushchenko led the center-right bloc Our Ukraine, which held just over 100 out of the 450 seats in the parliament. Yushchenko, a former chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine, pushed through a number of economic reforms during his time in office. A real economic breakthrough occurred in 2000, when the new government under Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko carried out momentous market reforms, slashing subsidies to oligarchs and leveling the playing field.
The so-called oligarch factions in parliament stepped up their bid to get rid of Prime Minister Yushchenko. The oligarch factions, which are largely pro-presidential, eyed 10 April 2001, the scheduled date of the government's annual report to parliament, as the day they would initiate a vote of no-confidence in Yushchenko if the prime minister didn't agree to form a coalition government with the acting parliamentary majority.
After the government of the reform-oriented Prime Minister Yushchenko fell to a no confidence vote in April of 2001, many observers feared that political forces in the Rada were arrayed in such a way as to make approval of a new reform-minded Prime Minister impossible. In May 2001, the Rada confirmed the head of the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, Anatoliy Kinakh, as Yushchenko's successor. Immediately upon assuming office on 29 May 2001, Prime Minister Kinakh declared his intention not only to maintain the reforms of the Yushchenko era, but to accelerate them. Under the leadership of Anatoly Kinakh, the Ukrainian government pushed through tax and land reforms. Within just a few months, President Kuchma and Prime Minister Kinakh successfully lobbied the Rada to pass key reform legislation.
The campaign leading to the October 31, 2004 presidential election was characterized by widespread violations of democratic norms, including government intimidation of the opposition and of independent media, abuse of state administrative resources, highly skewed media coverage, and numerous provocations. On January 10, 2005, after the CEC and the Supreme Court had considered and rejected numerous complaints and appeals filed by the Yanukovych campaign, the CEC certified the results: Yushchenko had won 51.99% of the votes, with 44.20% for Yanukovych. President Yushchenko was inaugurated January 23, 2005.
Subsequent internal squabbles in the YUSHCHENKO camp allowed his rival Viktor YANUKOVYCH to stage a comeback in parliamentary elections and become prime minister in August of 2006. An early legislative election, brought on by a political crisis in the spring of 2007, saw Yuliya TYMOSHENKO, as head of an "Orange" coalition, installed as a new prime minister in December 2007.
