BRUSSELS — There is no more depressing sight in politics than a leader who, desperate to cling to power, ruins his country in the process. By his recent actions, President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine now looks like he has joined the long list of rulers who have sacrificed their country's future simply to prolong their misrule.
Yushchenko's recent moves in both politics and economics suggest that his instinct for self-preservation knows no limits. Once a proud supporter of the free market and the man who banished hyperinflation in Ukraine in the 1990s, Yushchenko has in recent weeks vetoed — sometimes on flimsy grounds and sometimes for no stated reason at all — a series of vital privatizations.
He blocked the sale of regional energy companies, for example, because he claims that their privatization will threaten Ukraine's "national security," though it is corrupt and incompetent state management of these companies that is threatening Ukraine's security by making it vulnerable to energy cutoffs.