Ukraine leader’s sick leave prompts guessing game
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Amid the deepest turmoil since the Orange Revolution, President Viktor Yanukovych’s announcement yesterday that he was taking indefinite sick leave prompted a guessing game among Ukrainians about what was happening to
their country.
Debate raged on whether he was just sick or whether he was leaving the limelight in preparation for something, possibly either cracking down or stepping down.
Yanukovych has faced two months of major protests that sometimes paralyse central Kiev and have spread to other cities. The protests started after he backed out of a long-awaited agreement to deepen ties with the European Union in favour of Russia, but quickly came to encompass a wide array of discontent over corruption, heavy-handed police and dubious courts.
The official line is that the 63-year-old Yanukovych has an acute respiratory illness and a high fever.
But the opposition isn’t buying it. Some say he is looking for an excuse to avoid further discussions with opposition leaders, which have done nothing to resolve the tensions.
Vitali Klitschko, a leading opposition figure, has a more ominous theory — the president could be pretending to take himself out of action in preparation for imposing a state of emergency. That has been a persistent worry of the opposition since violent
clashes two weeks ago killed three protesters.
“I remember from the Soviet Union it’s a bad sign — a bad sign because always if some Soviet Union leaders have to make an unpopular decision, they go to the hospital,” Klitschko said.
Yanukovych’s press office says the president is still in charge of the country, but there was no indication of how long he might be on leave or how much work he would be able to do. He isn’t known to have serious health problems, although his office says he has taken sick leave twice before — once for a knee problem and the other time also for a respiratory illness.
Still, others took the announcement at face value. Analyst Mykhailo Pohrebinsky noted that Yanukovych had made a late-night visit to parliament amid tense discussions on Wednesday and “those who were close to him said he really was very pale
and exhausted.”
Hours after the government announced his sick leave, Yanukovych issued a statement to upbraid his political foes, saying “the opposition continues to escalate the situation and urges people to stand in the frost for the sake of the political ambitions of several of its leaders.”
Temperatures in Kiev have dropped as low as -20 C (-4 F) on some nights, bringing severe discomfort to those manning a round-the-clock protest tent camp on Kiev’s main square.