1994: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

Elections... elections... and more elections

Perhaps 1994 will be remembered as the year Ukraine gave up its nukes, or the year in which Ukraine was finally accepted by the West as a major player on the international scene. However, the reality of Ukraine 1994 was elections... elections... and more elections - 6 bazillion rounds were held before we lost count.

The electorate in some districts of Kyyiv went to the polls eight times without successfully electing a deputy. Voter turn-out diminished with each subsequent round. By November, 10 percent of the 450 seats still were not filled and vast amounts of money already had been spent. Foreseeing little benefit in continuing the impotent process, the Ukrainian Parliament decided too much is too much and suspended any further balloting.

It was a year in which three major elections were held in this fledgling country of 52.6 million people, each one going more than one round: two rounds before a Ukrainian president was elected; two rounds before a president of Ukraine's autonomous Republic of the Crimea gathered a majority of votes; and, of course, eight rounds and counting before a full Parliament is seated.

Crimea: elections amid violence and conflict

The first to exercise their franchise were the Crimeans. The autonomous republic, which was increasingly working according to its own agenda, scheduled elections to the republic's presidency for January 16. Mykola Bagrov, president of the Crimean Parliament; Leonid Grach, first secretary of the Crimean Parliament; and Yuriy Meshkov, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, who formed the Moscow-centered Republican Party of the Crimea, were the front runners, with Mr. Grach the overwhelming favorite.

Mr. Meshkov upset all predictions by taking 38.5 percent of the vote, more than doubling the tally for Mr. Bagrov, his closest competitor, who received 17.5 percent. Because no one candidate garnered the 50 percent voter approval necessary, a run-off was scheduled for two weeks later between the top two finishers.

However, it soon became apparent that Mr. Bagrov was not actively campaigning. On January 18, he had stated he was thinking about withdrawing from the race. His caution was not surprising given the violence that surrounded the candidates during the campaign. A day after his statement, his economic aide, Iskander Mametov, a member of Parliament and a Crimean Tatar, was shot and killed while driving to meet Mr. Bagrov. In December 1993, an attempt had been made to blow up Mr. Mametov's home.

Other violent incidents included a December 1993 beating of Mr. Meshkov, in which the assailants left him for dead; the killing of the head of a small pro-Russian faction of Crimean Tatars, Yuriy Osmanov, which was followed by a retribution bombing of the building of the radical and pro-Ukrainian Crimean Tatar Mejlis; and the suspicious death of Ukrainian parliamentarian Yakiv Apter, the head of the political party Union in Support of the Crimean Republic, in a car accident.

Most of the problems in the Crimea can be traced to its push towards Moscow. In this peninsula the effort was not entirely unforeseeable, as about 70 percent of the population is Russian, many pensioners who retired comfortably to their Black Sea dachas, only to see the declining economy destroy their savings.

Mr. Meshkov had called for closer ties to Russia, especially economic, a return to the ruble zone and the introduction of Russian as the official language. Many in Kyyiv thought he was a surrogate of Moscow in the Crimea, planted to set reunification in motion. Of the six candidates, only Mr. Bagrov favored maintaining close ties with Kyyiv.

In the run-off, the 48-year-old Mr. Meshkov destroyed Mr. Bagrov at the polls, 73 percent to 23 percent. He quickly pointed out that he had never called for closer ties to Russia. He said, "I am for a free Crimea. It needs economic independence." He then officially called for an all-Crimean referendum on independence, which he proposed should be held in conjunction with elections to the Ukrainian Parliament scheduled for March. He had initially proposed the idea the night before the elections in a surprise appearance on Crimean TV.

Mr. Meshkov enumerated four points of his agenda after his victory: renew economic associations with Moscow; re-establish agricultural and heavy industry trade with Russia; redevelop tourism. He called establishing a ruble zone a secondary issue.

The Crimean Tatars reacted strongly. The leader of the Crimean Tatar Meijlis, Mustafa Jemilev, called Mr. Meshkov's victory "the beginning of the Crimean Tatar tragedy." He accused Mr. Meshkov of stuffing ballots, but election observers from the West - among them representatives from NATO, the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe and the National Democratic Institute - called them "generally open and democratic."

The idea for the referendum quickly received a failing grade in Kyyiv. After several consultations between Ukraine's President Leonid Kravchuk and Mr. Meshkov, the president on March 15 annulled the referendum, calling the action unconstitutional. Undaunted, Mr. Meshkov turned the plebiscite into an opinion poll and put forth two questions regarding a move toward further autonomy: retainment of the right to make agreements with Ukraine via treaty; adoption of dual citizenship with Russia, onto a separate ballot. Both issues passed handily on March 27, supported by some 70 to 90 percent of the electorate (Ukraine cited lower figures than did the Crimea), and would be the seed for a showdown between Symferopil and Kyyiv at the end of May that would leave the two on the brink of armed conflict.

The endless elections to Parliament

The conventional wisdom regarding elections to Ukraine's Parliament was that more than one round would be needed to elect a full body of 450 deputies. Most foresaw a second round; maybe one more complete iteration of two rounds with new candidates, if those in the initial run-off did not receive the needed votes. No one thought that at year's end 10 percent (45 seats) of Parliament's deputies would still remain unelected.

The problem became the election law itself, which was roundly criticized by most Western experts. It was vehemently defended by the head of Ukraine's Central Electoral Commission, Ivan Yemets, until it became clear that the electoral process had gone into an infinite loop. Only then did he admit that something was amiss. What was wrong was a law that delineated that at least 50 percent of those eligible would have to vote in any given district before a victor could emerge. The winner would be the person to receive a majority of the votes cast, but not less than a total of 25 percent from all eligible voters.

Only 300 signatures were required for a candidate's name to appear on a ballot, so everybody and their sister-in-law's aunt entered to run in the free-for-all called Ukraine's first democratic parliamentary elections. For example, in one Kyyiv electoral district 27 candidates were on the ballot, a rather drastic change from a Communist-era ballot that usually gave the voter a choice of one. The large number of candidates, in effect, fragmented the electorate and made it almost impossible for any one candidate to get the votes needed to win. At the deadline, 5,802 candidates were registered for the 450 parliamentary seats.

Another part of the problem was that, although the top two vote-getters were allowed to go head to head in a second round when needed, if neither one again received sufficient votes, both were disqualified from running in any further run-offs. Many of the most qualified became disqualified after the second round because voter turnout was less than 50 percent. This left voters discouraged and unwilling to cast any further ballots in future rounds.

As the March 27 election date drew near, members of the Ukrainian diaspora began to appear in Kyyiv organizing programs to bring out the youth vote, which many considered the key to victory by the reformers and democrats.

Two major actions took place. First, a project called Youth Alternative, sponsored by a $57,000 grant from the Ukrainian National Association (UNA) and organized by Freedom House, established a network of students from several Ukrainian student organizations and tasked them with organizing and promoting voter turnout by the youth throughout Ukraine. One leader of Youth Alternative, Luba Shara, put it this way: "People should not be apathetic." She said that if students do not vote they have no right to complain about the system later. "We cannot let the old-timers tell us how to live," she said.

The effort also included appealing to the youth through the music medium they are most comfortable with. So several successful rock concerts emphasizing the need to vote and starring some of Ukraine's most renowned rock bands were held in several cities, including Kyyiv and Kharkiv.

The Election Preparedness Civic Education Program, sponsored by the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), also jumped into the get-out-the-youth-vote effort. They organized two hugely successful rock concerts in Kyyiv and Donetske, and developed a pre-election television ad campaign.

A press center called Elections '94 was established in the Ukrainian Home on the Khreshchatyk on February 9. Supported by money from the UCCA and UACC, the center was run by members of the Ukrainian and Western press and was the subject of some controversy.

The week prior to the election, observers from the West began to descend on Kyyiv in preparation for assignments throughout Ukraine. More than 500 observers from 53 countries gathered. The list of observers ranged from NATO, United Nations and CSCE representatives to members from the UACC and the UCCA. Their mission, as they saw it, was to passively observe how elections were run, to look for flagrant violations of democratic election norms and gather data, which they hoped would be used by the Ukrainian government in fine-tuning its roughly cut electoral process.

Problems developed from the outset. Two days before the election the Central Electoral Commission had not yet released the complete list of candidates, which brought complaints from Alfred DeZayas, representative for United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and head of the U.N. observer delegation. Marta Baziuk, of the National Democratic Institute (NDI), said the CEC had resisted NDI requests for information and clarification of issues. "They just seem above it all," she said.

At a briefing for the foreign press by Elections '94, its director, Roman Zvarych, warned, "They (CEC) have called us illegitimate. You understand that this makes us bastards."

But in the end the monitor's fears proved unfounded. They were given open access to almost all areas and called the elections "open and democratic," although most cited flaws in the election process and infractions of common Western voting procedures considered customary in this country. For example, Lord Finsberg, leader of the Council of Europe monitors, observed more than one voter entering the voting booth. Also, it was not unusual to see one voter carrying several individual's passports and voting for them. Lord Finsberg said he would mention the problem in his report.

What was most surprising was that 75 percent of Ukraine's eligible voters turned out. Many experts had feared that voter apathy would result in a very weak turnout, throwing the whole process into turmoil. However, even with three-quarters of the electorate voting, only 49 of the 450 seats were filled, due to the aforementioned large numbers of candidates on the various ballots.

The initial run-off proved more successful in getting candidates elected. After the second round 338 deputies had been elected as strong voter turnout continued to surprise experts. Important also was that more than 300 elected deputies allowed for a quorum and for the new Parliament to be seated.

The Communist Party of Ukraine took the most seats with 83. Together with the Socialist Party and the Agrarians, they would form the largest bloc with 118 votes. Rukh picked up only 20 seats and was generally considered the loser. Independents took 170 seats and were in a position to form the strongest bloc in the Parliament.

New elections with new candidates were scheduled for July 10 to fill the 112 still-vacant seats. The following rounds produced only 67 more deputies before voting was suspended. Kyyiv, which had the lowest voter turnout throughout the election, was left with only seven of its 23 seats filled.

Kuchma and Kravchuk battle for the presidency

The presidential election was scheduled for June 10, a date that President Leonid Kravchuk had chosen to placate striking Donetske miners. However, on February 19 Mr. Kravchuk dropped a bombshell when he announced that he would not run in re-elections. Speaking with reporters from Der Spiegel and Radio Liberty, he said he felt he should refrain from running and maintain diligence over government as the change in power occurs. Specifically, he said there was insufficient time between the presidential elections and ones for Parliament for the legislative body to get settled. "This could lead to a power vacuum," said the president. "If the president also dedicates himself to re-election, the executive organs could collapse and administrative bodies disintegrate."

Many believed he was positioning himself to cancel the elections, which he was not too keen on holding if only because his popularity was hitting bottom. But with 338 deputies already elected, his claims of a power vacuum were losing validity. The Parliament, quickly having elected a speaker and confirmed a prime minister, voted on June 2 to hold elections, despite President Kravchuk's calls to delay the vote for national security reasons.

The next day the president again suffered a setback when the Parliament voted to hold elections to oblast and regional councils that would replace local presidential representatives.

Getting one's name on the presidential ballot was a two-stage process. First, a person had to be put forth by a political party of at least 1,000 members or a voter's initiative group, which could be anything from a worker's collective to a group of people united for a candidate, and then registered with the CEC. In addition, the voter's initiative was required to submit at least 500 signatures with the registration. The second step required obtaining the signatures of 100,000 registered voters with at least 1,500 of them being collected in each of 300 of the 450 electoral districts. Seven candidates fulfilled the requirements.

They were: President Kravchuk; former Chairman of Parliament, Ivan Pliushch; newly elected Chairman of Parliament Oleksander Moroz; Leonid Kuchma, head of the Inter-Regional Bloc of Reforms; Volodymyr Lanovy, director of the Center for Market Reforms; Petro Talanchuk, minister of education; and Valeriy Babych, president of the Ukrainian Financial Group.

Mr. Kravchuk maintained that he would not run and that the elections were no better than a glorified referendum on the presidency. Then suddenly on April 29, he did an about-face and declared his intention to run. "Leonid Kravchuk's consent to be a candidate indicates that he is not afraid of the elections," said his domestic policy aide, Mykola Mykhalchenko.

Other politicians had also suggested that perhaps early summer was not the best time to hold elections, so soon after elections to Parliament. They included Rukh leader Vyacheslav Chornovil and a leader of the Ukrainian Republican Party, Levko Lukianenko.

A week before elections, the two Leonids, Kuchma and Kravchuk, were the clear favorites, close enough that experts predicted that a run-off would be required. They were right as President Kravchuk captured 37.72 percent of the vote and Leonid Kuchma was supported by 31.27 percent of the populace. Heavy turnout was reported with 68 percent of those eligible exercising their franchise. After them came Oleksander Moroz at 13 percent and Volodymyr Lanovy with 9 percent.

Because neither of the front-runners garnered the 50 percent needed for victory, the second round was scheduled for July 10. Mr. Kuchma, the 55-year-old industrialist from Dnipropetrovske, once head of the world's largest missile factory, Pivdenmash, outdistanced Ukraine's first president, Mr. Kravchuk, 52 percent to 45 percent with more than 71 percent of those eligible voting. Election monitors again called the elections relatively free and fair.

Mr. Kuchma ran on a platform of closer economic ties with Moscow, introduction of Russian as an official language and the need for implementing market reforms in Ukraine. With their vote the population told Mr. Kravchuk that his paralysis as to where to go with the failing economic situation would no longer be tolerated.

But like a phoenix he rose from the ashes. On September 25, he won a seat to Parliament from the Terebovlia district of Ternopil, garnering 87 percent of the vote as elections continued to try to fill the empty seats in Parliament.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, December 25, 1994, No. 52, Vol. LXII

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