Six rounds of voting produce no chairman for Verkhovna Rada (06/14/98)

Six rounds of voting produce no chairman for Verkhovna Rada

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - After two more failed attempts to elect a chairman and with that process now into its second month, Ukraine's new Parliament finally decided on June 11 that compromise is the only way out of its leadership crisis.

Leaders of the legislature's eight political factions agreed during a meeting of a special conciliatory committee to take up the proposal set forth by a group of four centrist factions that the Verkhovna Rada chairman must be proposed and voted upon in a package with the two vice-chairs, which had been put forth in the first days after Ukraine's newly elected legislature had convened.

National Deputy Yurii Kostenko said the only way out of the crisis is to allow for representation on the presidium by all the forces in Parliament. "There needs to be a representative from the center, the right and the left for a leadership to be elected," said Mr. Kostenko.

The legislative body has tried six times to elect a chairman because its membership, aligned for the first time into political parties, has split into two ideological camps.

The leftist bloc had resisted a package vote because it believed it could take the chairmanship without a compromise candidate. It nominated Communist faction leader Petro Symonenko four times without success. But after its second strong contender, Socialist Center faction leader Oleksander Moroz, the chairman of the last Parliament, failed in the fifth and sixth rounds to attain the 226 votes needed to elect a chairman, the leftists agreed to the compromise move.

The four centrist factions, Rukh, the National Democrats, the Social-Democrats (United) and the Greens, forged a temporary coalition after they decided the only strategy that would prevent a parliamentary presidium of leftists would be to boycott voting for the leadership until an agreed-upon package of nominees had been worked out between the left and right.

They boycotted four of the six votes. But, more importantly, the two times they did vote the results showed that candidates of the left could not get the needed votes, even with a full complement of national deputies taking part.

Mr. Moroz, who many thought might win the chairmanship as a last-choice candidate, could muster only 177 votes in the fifth round of voting, which was boycotted by the coalition of four centrist factions. In the sixth round, with everybody participating, he still received only 197 votes.

Now, with many of the strongest potential candidates having spent themselves during the Parliament's monthlong political chess game, the question is: who might the factions agree upon for the presidium?

Although all the nominees who failed to get elected - including Mr. Kostenko, a leading Rukh figure, and Leonid Kravchuk, co-leader of the Socialist Democrat faction, as well as Messrs. Symonenko and Moroz - could be re-nominated, the feeling is that a person who has not taken part in the political wars has the best chance.

"Right now they are looking for a neutral choice," said National Deputy Mykhailo Ratushnyi, an independent.

He suggested that Mykhailo Syrota, who guided the vote on the ratification of the Constitution in 1996, is a strong contender. "This would be a very normal and objective choice," said Mr. Ratushnyi.

There are also hints that the Rukh and NDP centrist factions are willing to look at a package slate that would include a Communist in one of the vice-chair seats. National Deputy Roman Zvarych suggested before the fifth round of voting that such a move is not out of the question.

"There could be an agreement between Rukh, the National Democrats and the Communists for a package vote that would put Hromada and the Socialists on the outside," said Mr. Zvarych. "This process could also include the Social Democrats, but that would complicate matters."

The Communists, National Democrats and Rukh are the three largest factions in the Verkhovna Rada.

Mr. Ratushnyi said that, although an agreement may be in the works between the three largest political groupings, it will still come down to personalities and that could pose further problems.

"It is absolutely a realistic possibility, but then they would have to agree on who would take the chairmanship and the first and second chairs," observed Mr. Ratushnyi.