New poll results suggest strong showing by Moroz (12/06/98)

New poll results suggest strong showing by Moroz

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - If presidential elections were held today, Oleksander Moroz, the former chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, would win the presidency in a second round run-off with the incumbent, Leonid Kuchma, according to a survey released by the International Institute of Sociology (IIS) of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

Ukraine's presidential elections, scheduled for the last weekend in October 1999, are still nearly a year off, but most experts agree that the presidential election season began last month.

The IIS poll, which questioned 1,587 Ukrainians age 17 and older in 115 villages, towns and cities in all of the country's regions on their political and economic viewpoints, also determined that Ukrainians are less satisfied with their lives than in 1996, when optimism regarding economic and political change reached a peak.

In the poll, 11.6 percent of respondents gave the nod to President Kuchma when asked for whom they would vote in a field of seven presidential candidates, compared to merely 9.7 percent for Mr. Moroz. However, when the candidate field was narrowed to a run-off situation between Messrs. Kuchma and Moroz, the former chairman of the Parliament took 25.5 percent of the vote compared to 21.5 for the current president.

National Deputy Natalia Vitrenko, the leader of the Progressive Socialist Party whose controversial and bombastic populism has earned her a small but loyal neo-Communist following in Ukraine, received a surprising 9 percent vote of support as a potential presidential candidate. Ms. Vitrenko's standing has grown by a third since September, when she was supported by only 6 percent of Ukrainians.

Prof. Valerii Khmelko, who oversaw the survey, said that Mr. Moroz's strong showing is due to the dissatisfaction of Ukrainians with the current state of their collective standard of living. "Preliminary analysis indicated that the popularity of Moroz seems to be a result of a protest vote," said Mr. Khmelko.

He explained that the number of people who said they were ready to join picket lines to protest the current economic and political situation in Ukraine had grown from 11 percent in 1996 to 16 percent in November, when the poll was conducted, and that there is a correlation between these respondents and Moroz supporters.

He attributed Ms. Vitrenko's unexpected popularity to her recent calls for drastic increases in the minimum pay for workers and pensioners.

As for President Kuchma's popularity rating, Prof. Khmelko said it has steadily been dropping since he was elected in July 1994, except for a period in autumn 1996 after the new national currency was introduced, when the president's popularity rose 4 to 5 points.

Others who made the short list of presidential candidates were Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko, with an unexpectedly poor showing of 6.8 percent; Rukh Party leader Vyacheslav Chornovil with 4.3 percent; followed by two former prime ministers, Pavlo Lazarenko and Yevhen Marchuk at 2.6 percent and 2.4 percent, respectively. The poll's margin of error is 2.6 percent.

Prof. Khmelko pointed out that key in the actual elections will be the 53.6 percent of respondents who either stated that they would vote against all of the listed candidates, would not vote at all, or found it difficult to say for whom they would vote.

"The results are not to be interpreted as who will win the presidential election in 1999, but merely how people are thinking today," said the professor.

The belief by Ukrainians that economic and political reform is needed also has waned according to the IIS poll. Fully a third of those questioned agreed that "it is imperative that a planned socialist system needs to be re-introduced" in Ukraine; and only 34 percent still thought that Ukrainians must have the right to own land (including the ability to sell and buy it), compared to 66 percent in 1994, and 45 percent in 1996.

Asked whether they are satisfied with "how things currently are in Ukraine," 70 percent of the respondents expressed dissatisfaction - an increase of 13 percent since 1996, when Ukrainians were most satisfied with the country's course. Only 4 percent expressed any satisfaction.

Sixty percent also stated that they are not satisfied with their current lives, up by 7 percent since 1996. However, the numbers of those who said their economic situation had worsened went down from 60 percent two years ago to 54 percent today.

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