The recent takeover of Inter TV channel and ban on counter-advertising shows there is an authoritarian streak coming out in Tymoshenko, writes Otar Dovzhenko.

«Who told you people don't want dictatorship?»

These are the words of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko broadcast live on TRK Ukraina TV channel on Sept. 25. They clearly mean the end of the game for democratic values. This is not the first time, though, that Tymoshenko and her team have demonstrated their readiness to act decisively, sometimes treading on law, like they have done during two recent offenses in her media war.

In the 2006 and 2007 parliamentary campaign, criticism and dirty public relations tactics of her opponents helped her keep the image of being a martyr for truth. She has graduated from victimhood and is testing her strength in assault tactics.

The first one to be neutralized was Inter TV channel, the biggest media asset in Ukraine and the most powerful propaganda weapon in the hands of Tymoshenko's rivals. From early 2009, when she removed RosUkrEnergo intermediary from supplying gas to Ukraine, Inter (controlled by RosUkrEnergo boss Dmytro Firtash and the disgraced ex-customs chief Valery Khoroshkovsky) launched a tough information war against the government and Tymoshenko personally.

Striving to bite the prime minister and her team, journalists violated every possible professional standard and exceeded the limits of decency, boycotting the government's standpoint and employing so-called «black PR». At the same time, the channel persistently promoted presidential candidate Arseniy Yatseniuk, who was considered Tymsohenko's main rival.  This was unparalleled since the times of President Leonid Kuchma.

Tymoshenko started off with her usual victim tactics. She publicly complained about Inter, called for «real Ukrainians» not to watch the channel, banned her comrades-in-arms from giving any comments to the channel. But soon, the pro-Tymoshenko hawks conceived a plan of counter-attack. The blow was aimed at Inter's dubious past. After the sudden death of the channel's owner Igor Pluzhnykov in 2005, the channel was sold to Khoroshkovsky, but not all the documents of the trustees were in order. Or so said Russian businessman Konstantin Grigorishin, who then had an option to buy Inter, and recently decided to claim his rights in court.

His claim, later dismissed by court because of his failure to show up before the judge, made it possible to revisit long-dead criminal cases. At the same time, Tymoshenko's deputies got parliament to start an ad hoc investigative commission.

This was a psychological attack that achieved its goal, despite having scant legal prospects. Inter's owner believed in the cultivated rumors that Tymoshenko is preparing to take away the channel, having legitimized her actions in her pocket courts. They decided to make peace on conditions highly beneficial to her.

Firtash's option of 50 percent of Inter holding was sold to a businessman loyal to Tymoshenko, sources said. General producer Hanna Bezlyudna, who had transformed Inter in 2007 and turned it into an unquestionable leader of the market, was dismissed in early September. The dismissal, which triggered the departure of a part of management and journalists, was a symbolic sacrifice, since there is no doubt that Bezlyudna would cause no opposition to the new editorial policy. Inter's editorial policy currently lies in balancing between Tymoshenko and Victor Yanukovych, disregarding Yatseniuk and most other candidates and in pushing extremely thorough  coverage of the Cabinet's activity. The policy might change closer to the elections.

In this fight, Tymoshenko killed two birds with one stone: she paid someone else's money to get loyalty of the most powerful media group for the election, and she snatched Inter from under Yanukovych's nose, something he didn't count on. She has also gained a substantial advantage in terms of TV coverage.

Currently, three of the four most powerful media holdings (Inter, 1+1-CME and Victor Pinchuk's channels) display loyalty to Tymoshenko. Only one, TRK Ukraina, is owned by Rinat Akhmetov and stands by Yanukovych.

While a lawsuit was used for psychological pressure in the fight for Inter, there has been a more recent operation when Tymoshenko's team used courts for suppressing counter-advertisements directed against her «Vona Pratsyuye» (She's working) campaign. Fortunately, the pressure of public opinion forced her to back out.

Ukraine's law bans political advertising before the official start of the election campaign. But politicians have learned to use legal loopholes to make their ads look like social or commercial advertising. This year most main presidential contenders started advertising early. Tymoshenko was no exception. Streets were abound will billboards carrying her "She's working" slogan, but had no reference as to who commissioned them or what the meaning of pronoun "she" stands for.

Obviously, there was no doubt who the ads meant. Rivals took advantage of it by designing ads in similar style with the opposite message, hinting that «she» would be better off resting than working. The ads were just as persuasive as the originals.

Having realized that she's being beaten with her own weapon, Tymoshenko's campaign authors chose to fight and win in court. On Sept. 22, Pechersk district judge Serhiy Vovk ruled to ban «unfair advertising of the government and Yulia Tymoshenko». Challenged in court was a TV commercial made by Yanukovych's headquarters. The ruling was used as an excuse to destroy all paid-for billboards copying the «She is working» style all over Ukraine. It also caused indignation not just among Tymoshenko's political opponents, but human rights activists and the community. Since when has the pronoun «she» come to mean exclusively Tymoshenko? What about infringement on freedom of expression?

Tymoshenko was brilliantly cynical in her explanations. She, of course, deeply respects freedom of speech and would never allow censorship, but there will be no «unfair ads»in Ukraine because it's bad, and ads have to be positive. Like her own. «We hope that the Party of the Regions campaign is capable of finding in Yanukovych at least something good, kind and useful for the country. Stressing the positive will allow society to avoid an advertising war on TV channels», said representatives of Tymoshenko's bloc.

Representatives of the Regions Party, although they have protested against the court's ruling, realize themselves they're no good presenting themselves as fighters for freedom of speech. Yanukovych's political force has a long trail of contemptuous attitudes towards journalists and using media for their own gains.

This negative image was supplemented by a scene in the very Shuster Live program on Sept. 25 in which Tymoshenko spoke about dictatorship. Regions Party members crashed the show and tried to pressure its host, Savik Shuster, threatening to ban the program from air and causing scandals. The three Regions Party members showed open contempt to other program participants, turning the show into a non-stop verbal quarrel with the prime minister.

At the end, when it turned out that the Regions Party members had actually been invited and were supposed to sneak into the studio surreptitiously, the disappointed Tymoshenko exclaimed: «It's a pity these live programs are planned in the Party of the Regions headquarters!»

This would have been very touching if we didn't know that her aim is to have all programs planned by her own headquarters.

 Otar Dovzhenko, Special to «Kyiv Post»

Otar Dovzhenko is an observer at Telekritika, a media watchdog, at www.detector.media

Photo by Oleksandr Prokopenko, «Kyiv Post»