Ministry of Information suspends publication of Pravda Ukrainy (02/08/98)

Ministry of Information suspends publication of Pravda Ukrainy

by Pavel Politiuk
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

KYIV - The newspaper Pravda Ukrainy became the first media victim of the political war between President Leonid Kuchma's administration and the opposition political party Hromada led by Pavlo Lazarenko when the Ministry of Information suspended publication of the newspaper on January 28.

The war between the president and Mr. Lazarenko, his former prime minister, began several months ago when Mr. Kuchma's office blamed the ex-prime minister for worsening Ukraine's economic and financial situation while in office and for developing an image of Ukraine that has led foreign investors to shun the country.

Mr. Lazarenko's Hromada Party responded by charging the Kuchma government with financial improprieties, including questions about what happened to $40 million that was to have gone to the renovation of the Ukraina Palace of Culture (Palats Kultury Ukraina) concert hall.

The Kuchma side responded with a return volley on January 28, when Minister of Information Zinovii Kulyk signed a resolution barring a large state-run publishing house from printing Pravda Ukrainy, which strongly supports Mr. Lazarenko, because the newspaper was illegally registered.

"Investigations by the Ministry of Justice and the Procurator General's Office have determined that the [registration] certificate of Pravda Ukrainy is ineffective," said First Vice Minister of Information Oleh Bei in an interview in Kievskiye Viedomosti.

The Information Ministry indicated that the newspaper's re-registration last summer as part of a Ukrainian-Antiguan joint venture violated a law restricting foreign participation in joint media ventures.

In addition Mr. Kulyk said the registration papers contained a small, but significant, error. Last July the newspaper registered as a Ukrainian-Antiguan closed joint stock company in which 76 percent belonged to the Antiguan side and 34 percent to Ukrainians.

"They found a partner in remote Antigua but failed to check the documents, which state that the share capital equals 110 percent, not 100 percent," Mr. Kulyk said.

The information minister said this is not the only legal infraction the newspaper committed. Mr. Kulyk said Pravda Ukrainy is also guilty of distributing more than 500,000 free, three-month-long subscriptions, which he said violates election law.

A top Hromada Party member said the print ban slapped on Pravda Ukrainy is part of a plot to discredit the opposition to President Kuchma in the run-up to the March parliamentary elections and the presidential vote scheduled for next year.

Although the Ministry of Information denied any political motivation for the suspension of Pravda Ukrainy, Oleksander Turchinov, chairman of Hromada's central coordinating committee, said "this is the beginning of the implementation of an acute plan for the destruction of the Ukrainian opposition. Over the last six months one can see how the authorities are trying to destroy the political party Hromada."

Mr. Turchinov and Pravda Ukrainy Editor-in-Chief Oleksander Horobets both said the claim against the newspaper is bogus. Mr. Horobets called the print suspension order "illegal" and said Minister of Information Kulyk had exceeded his authority.

"According to the information law, only the courts or the founders [of a newspaper] can decide to stop publication of the newspaper," said Mr. Horobets. "Kulyk stepped beyond the law, and we will demand a court investigation into his actions."

However the Ministry of Information maintains it has done everything within constraints of the law. "We did not ban anything. We only suspended publication until such time that all the registration documents are in order," said Mr. Bei.

Editor-in-Chief Horobets said he plans to continue publishing the paper and will use private printing houses to do so. The Kyiv tabloid Kievskiye Viedomosti printed the first issue of Pravda Ukrainy after the print suspension order was put into effect.

Three days after the suspension Mr. Horobets announced that 80 journalists and technicians employed by the paper have decided to live in the Pravda Ukrainy offices as a protest against the state-run building administration's attempts to evict them. "We will continue the struggle," said Mr. Horobets, who vowed to sue Mr. Kulyk and to continue publishing Pravda Ukrainy. "We will print the paper - even if we have to do it by hand."

The Ukrainian Media Club and the Ukrainian Union of Journalists have criticized the decision taken by the Ministry of Information, as has Verkhovna Rada Chairman Oleksander Moroz, who said he is sure that "the decision to suspend publication of Pravda Ukrainy is persecution of the paper for its political position."

On February 3, during a plenary session, after a statement by Mr. Lazarenko, who, in addition to being the leader of the Hromada Party, is also the head of the Yednist faction in the Verkhovna Rada, the legislative body voted to appoint a special committee to investigate the Pravda Ukrainy situation.

Meanwhile, the Regional Arbitration Court of Chernivtsi announced a ruling the same day that may shut down another newspaper that supports Mr. Lazarenko and his Hromada Party. Vseukrainskiye Viedomosti, one of Ukraine's most popular newspapers, was ordered to pay 3.5 million hrv ($1.8 million) to the Dynamo Soccer Club as compensation for printing false information that its star player, forward Andrii Shevchenko, would sign with the Italian soccer club Milan AC.

"No newspaper in Ukraine can afford to pay this amount of money or even earn it in two or three years," said Volodymyr Ruban, editor-in-chief of Vseukrainskiye Viedomosti.

He added that he sees politics influencing the court's decision. "The point of this action is to block the work of the paper," said Mr. Ruban. "There are a lot of questions that have not been answered."

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