Now after two years of what some would consider a counterrevolution, Kyiv's streets are once again filled with demonstrators in the thousands, but this time the direction is much less clear.
While there are a number of reasons for the current instability, the most important are the disagreements centering on the shift in power from the president to the prime minister and the parliament that was ordained in the constitutional reforms agreed at the time Yushchenko became president.
This struggle for power was the principal factor that led to the president to issue the decree dissolving parliament and ordering new elections. Naturally, the Regions, Socialists, Communist and other parties who agreed with the power shift to the parliament and the prime minister and gained from it, are now engaged in a bitter battle to keep those gains.
However, many political and business leaders in Ukraine are beginning to wonder if the power struggle - and its attendant instability - will end, or will become even more intense after a scheduled decision by the Constitutional Court in regard to parliamentary dissolution.
The strong-president pattern was set during the presidential administrations of both Leonid Kravchuk and Leonid Kuchma, Ukraine's first two post-independence presidents, during which weak and virtually powerless prime ministers came and went with great regularity.
Since Ukraine's proclamation of independence from the Soviet Union on August 24, 1991, there have been 17 confirmed and acting terms of office for 15 different persons in the post of prime minister.
The longest term as prime minister was that of Valery Pustovoitenko, who served from July 16, 1997 until December 22, 1999 when the Verkhovna Rada refused to reconfirm him at the beginning of Leonid Kuchma's second term as president. On the other end of the spectrum, two persons served acting terms of less than one month.
No matter who served in the office until 2006, it was always clear that the prime minister was clearly subservient to the president and subject to removal at his whim. In the balance of power between the president, the prime minister and the parliament, it was always clear that the prime minister was the least important, least powerful and most politically insecure.
Whether that weakness in the powers of the prime minister was in the best interests of the country is an open question, but the strong president - weak prime minister tradition was strongly entrenched.
There have been periods of relative instability in the past, but in each situation presidential control of the so-called force agencies, the police, the paramilitary police (MVS) and the military forces made it clear that the president was first among theoretical equals.
Most political observers now believe that President Yushchenko did not clearly understand the full scope of the constitutional reforms that he agreed to in the process of becoming president. Of course, it may have been that in the euphoria surrounding his success in gaining the presidency, Yushchenko totally misjudged the willingness of the parliament to overturn those changes - as he desired - in the time frame before they were to take effect. However it happened, we now faced with a bitter struggle over power with no end in sight.
Ukraine's recent extremely positive news of the approval of its joint application with Poland to host the UEFA 2012 Euro Championship soccer series has been leavened by the short term bad news of the cancellation of at least one major international business event and the possibility of others.
The situation is ripe with irony. Ukraine has finally developed immensely expanded five star hotel space, and continues to draw substantial foreign direct investment, opening a myriad of business and cultural opportunities. However, the internecine warfare among political elites could bring about long-lasting political instability that could negate many of the economic and political gains of recent years. Not only that, the regionalism - and possible federalization - that Ukraine faced after the Orange Revolution could arise again and become a permanent part of the political dialogue.
So far the large street demonstrations with each of the main party groupings marshaling thousands of their supporters, first in Maidan Nezalezhnosti and the area around the parliament and later around the Constitutional Court, have been relatively peaceful. Just how long that continues remains to be seen.
What is certain is that none of the major actors in this dispute have been willing to sit around a table and come to a compromise that is in the best interests of the country. Instead, a number of court suits have become the focal point of a decision making process that can only be decided by the nation's highest court on constitutional matters.
This is further complicated by the fact that extremely serious charges have been made public that suggest major ethical breaches on the part of at least one of the most important members of the Constitutional Court.
Just where all this will lead Ukraine is unclear. What is clear is that unless cooler heads prevail and some modus vivendi is soon reached, Ukraine's reputation for stability might be further damaged.
If the courts uphold the presidential decree ordering parliamentary dissolution and new elections, political analysts believe that the resulting election results could very well be anticlimactic, possibly even exacerbating an already difficult situation.
In spite of all the current discord - and perhaps to some degree because of it - Ukraine still has the possibility to become one of the economic and political powerhouses of Europe. When - and if - that happens depends upon developing a level of political maturity that the country currently lacks.
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