Orange Revolution a cautionary tale for North African rebels

From snowy Kiev, I have watched the revolutions in Cairo and Tunis with joy and admiration. Egyptians and Tunisians are right to be proud of their desire to peacefully overthrow despotic governments.

But, as someone who led a peaceful revolution, I hope that pride is tempered by pragmatism, as a change of regime is only the first step in establishing a democracy backed by the rule of law.

The first of Ukraine's lessons for Egyptian and Tunisian democrats is that elections do not a democracy make. After all, what if the enemies of freedom use elections to entrench their anti-democratic agendas? What if elements of the old regime, or militant minorities, only pretend to embrace democratic norms in order to hijack the new democracy?

In Ukraine today, these are not abstract questions. Six years after our Orange Revolution, not only is my country's democracy under threat, but also the rule of law is being perverted and our independence bartered away. Indeed, the hybrid presidential/parliamentary system that Ukraine established as part of the settlement which brought a peaceful end to our revolution is being hollowed out in order to concentrate power in the hands of the president.

Of course, Ukraine's plight does not mean the people of Egypt and Tunisia should spurn the call for free elections. Determining the will of the people does require expression through the ballot box. But to be effective, elections must be preceded by an extensive debate, in which political arguments are made, attacked, defended, and, ultimately, embodied in ideologically coherent party organisations. Democratic consent can truly be given only when voters know what they are consenting to. Whoever refuses to make a public case for what he or she intends to do when in power, or lies about it - as Ukraine's current president, Viktor Yanukovich, did during his campaign against me last year - is no supporter of democracy.

Moreover, democracy must be rooted in the rule of law. There must be accepted rules that are binding on everyone, so that whoever does not accept or obey them is disqualified. Yanukovich's naked attempt to hijack the election that precipitated the Orange Revolution should have caused him to be banned from future elections. Yet he was not.

As president, Yanukovich's crude instinct is to treat the law and constitution as Karl Marx thought of them: a mixture of sentimentality, superstition and the unconscious rationalisation of private interests.

A second lesson follows from this: the fact that a government has been democratically elected does not mean the cause of freedom has prevailed. The world must not turn a blind eye to authoritarian backsliding. Yet not only are many of Ukraine's neighbours silent about Yanukovich's strangulation of democracy, but some openly celebrate the supposed "stability" his regime has imposed.For decades, Egyptians and Tunisians paid a high a price in freedom for the stability of others. They must never be asked, or forced, to pay it again.

• Yuliya Tymoshenko was prime minister of Ukraine and is now leader of the opposition.