Kuchma removes Lazarenko as prime minister (06/22/97)

Kuchma removes Lazarenko as prime minister

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Ukraine's Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, at odds with his boss and onetime political ally, President Leonid Kuchma, for most of the year, and now being accused of moral bankruptcy and corruption by political opponents, looks to be on the way out under the cover of illness.

On June 19 President Kuchma signed a decree that appoints First Vice Prime Minister Vasyl Durdynets as acting prime minister, after it was announced that Mr. Lazarenko had fallen ill, a day after returning from a working visit to Canada. A spokesman at the presidential press service would not comment on the ramifications of the appointment but said that Mr. Durdynets would remain in the post "for as long as Mr. Lazarenko is sick."

According to Verkhovna Rada National Deputy Serhii Teriokhin, by law a government official cannot be relieved of his duties for 45 days while ill. The national deputy predicted that Mr. Lazarenko will tender his resignation after the term expires.

Rumors began circulating early on June 19 that the president was ready to relieve Mr. Lazarenko of his post. An afternoon news release by Interfax-Ukraine quoted a "usually well-informed source" as saying that the sacking of the prime minister was imminent. "The probability is high that the decree will be published in a matter of hours," the source is said to have explained. The news agency also said the issue of Mr. Lazarenko's dismissal had been discussed by the president with regional leaders at a closed-door meeting of the heads of oblast administrations the previous evening, but did not state if any decision had been made at the time.

Then the prime minister did not appear at an afternoon session of the Verkhovna Rada attended by his Cabinet of Ministers, where Ukraine's still-not-enacted 1997 budget was being reviewed in a second reading.

Parliament Chairman Oleksander Moroz announced that Mr. Lazarenko had taken ill and that Vice Prime Minister Durdynets would head the Cabinet contingent at the session.

Oleksander Kravenko, spokesperson in the Cabinet of Ministers press service, said Mr. Lazarenko had been hospitalized in the morning with an unidentified illness. When pressed as to what type of illness he said, "They haven't told us anything. Don't ask me more, please, this will only be conjecture by Kravenko."

Verkhovna Rada National Deputy Vyiacheslav Chornovil said he believes that the prime minister has been removed. "They thought of a very imaginative way out for Mr. Lazarenko," he said. "To my knowledge Mr. Lazarenko is a very healthy man."

President Kuchma, who like Mr. Lazarenko hails from Dnipropetrovsk and is said to have been his mentor at one time, has severely criticized his prime minister on several occasions in the last few months. First the president criticized Mr. Lazarenko's inaction on corruption at a meeting of the presidential Committee on the Fight Against Corruption and Organized Crime on February 14, where he announced the "Clean Hands" battle against corruption in government. Then during his state of the state speech on March 21, he chastised the prime minister publicly for putting together a sloppy and unapprovable budget.

Most recently, on June 13, President Kuchma replied to a demand by the People's Democratic Party that Mr. Lazarenko resign his office. The president said, "Mr. Lazarenko must himself answer charges against his honor and morality." He explained that a day earlier he had received the latest information on Mr. Lazarenko's business dealings from National Deputy Hryhorii Omelchenko, chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Combating Organized Crime and Corruption. "I am neither a public prosecutor nor a judge, I am guarantor of the Constitution and my responsibility is to issue instructions on an objective investigation," said Mr. Kuchma.

Mr. Lazarenko lately had been under political attack by the People's Democratic Party of Ukraine (PDPU), which is closely aligned with President Kuchma. Several members of the party, including head of the presidential administration, Yevhen Kushniarov, are close confidants of the president. At the party's congress on June 7, PDPU Chairman Anatolii Matvienko called for Mr. Lazarenko's resignation "for many reasons, including his moral quality." He said that he would resign as head of the Vinnytsia Oblast Administration if the prime minister was not removed.

At a press conference on June 13 PDPU Secretary Oleksander Yemets evaded reporter's requests for specific allegations and information on Mr. Lazarenko's moral turpitude. He said, "The findings published in Ukrainian newspapers would be enough to sack five governments. We can take a truck and deliver them."

Head of the party's secretariat, Volodymyr Filenko, added that his party would deliver proof of Mr. Lazarenko's immoral dealings to the president within a couple of weeks. Later that day the Reform faction in the Verkhovna Rada said it would also support the resignation of Mr. Lazarenko. On June 18 the Constitutional Center faction joined the growing swell of anti-Lazarenko sentiment.

Mr. Lazarenko has not made any real effort to answer the charges, most of which are ambiguous. He responded to PDPU Chairman Matvienko's accusations only by telling Interfax-Ukraine that he "was troubled" by Mr. Matvienko's remarks and that Mr. Matvienko "as he himself has said must decide whether he is going to play politics, live and run his political party from Kyiv, or if he is going to work out the problems in Vinnytsia, which is his responsibility as the regional leader. Things in Vinnytsia are much worse than in other regions of Ukraine."

Mr. Lazarenko has been implicated in corrupt business dealings via hearsay and innuendo since before an attempt on his life was made on July 16, 1996, when a remote-controlled bomb exploded beneath the car in which he was traveling. The press has often mentioned his ties to the corrupt Russian gas and oil industry. Unsubstantiated conjecture also ran rampant after the assassination of National Deputy Yevhen Shcherban, a Donetsk businessman thought to have had ties to organized crime, that Mr. Lazarenko was involved.

The source of the corruption allegations comes from the allegedly vast amounts of money that Mr. Lazarenko has made in the past several years. Numerous sources have estimated his 1996 income to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. He is thought to have made most of his money by purchasing Russian gas and oil at low state-controlled prices and selling them at inflated prices on the Ukrainian market through his ties to United Energy Systems, Ukraine's largest energy conglomerate. He has denied that he is involved with the company.

In a recent interview in the Toronto Globe and Mail, Mr. Lazarenko dismissed all the corruption allegations as rumors.

Mr. Lazarenko was appointed prime minister by President Kuchma on May 28, 1996, after the dismissal of Yevhen Marchuk. At the time the president believed that the young businessman, who had been vice prime minister, would use his widely acknowledged organizational and administrative skills to push through lagging economic reforms.

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