Kuchma says he will seek re-election to demonstrate commitment to reform (09/22/96)

Kuchma says he will seek re-election to demonstrate commitment to reform

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Even though presidential elections are not scheduled until October 1999, President Leonid Kuchma announced on September 16 that he would stand for re-election.

It was an unexpected statement, made during an interview on the private television station Gravis TV with the station's reporters, that caught everyone off guard.

The president told the station's reporters that the reform process in reality is just getting under way and that he wanted to see it through to its conclusion. "Ten years is the minimum period for a country that has started radical reforms to see the results," said President Kuchma.

Two days later, at the weekly press briefing given by the president's press service, amid a barrage of questions, First Presidential Advisor Volodymyr Lytvyn was left to explain Mr. Kuchma's statement. "Like [former President Leonid Kravchuk] said, "A president, after his term in office is up, should be able to walk the streets of the city, whether it be Kyiv, Lviv, Odessa or Kharkiv, knowing he has done everything he set out to do," commented Mr. Lytvyn.

He said the president had decided that he must let the public know the extent to which he is dedicated to seeing through reforms. "Too often in government a person who is not seeking to maintain public office can be perceived as looking out only for his personal affairs," explained Mr. Lytvyn.

He underscored that this is not the beginning of the election season and that the president does not expect others to throw their hats into the ring at this early stage.

"The best way to explain the announcement," said Mr. Lytvyn, is that "the president will work with all his effort towards a stable political and economic situation in the country."

Asked whom the president would consider his opposition today, Mr. Lytvyn said, "I don't think there is a soldier who wouldn't want to be general or more. Today there are many who would be president."

Rumors have circulated among the press that Mr. Kuchma's announcement was a political move to forewarn any of the several rising stars in his Cabinet and administration that they should not even consider sniffing the pot from which he eats.

Although Mr. Lytvyn would not give specific names of potential opponents to President Kuchma, one that has to be considered is his relatively new prime minister, Pavlo Lazarenko, one of the "young turks" in the president's administration who has a strong financial and political base in Dnipropetrovske.

The 43-year-old prime minister has kept quiet about his political ambitions and probably rightly so. His predecessor, Yevhen Marchuk, was fired after persistent rumors that he was setting himself up for a run at the presidency. President Kuchma admitted as much when he explained that Mr. Marchuk had been released because he had not been following the political agenda set by the president.

A president is allowed two five-year terms according to Ukraine's new Constitution. President Kuchma was elected to his first term in July 1994, when he defeated Ukraine's first president, Leonid Kravchuk, in a run-off election.