Presidential campaign season in full swing, as two parties announce support for Udovenko (01/24/99)

Presidential campaign season in full swing, as two parties announce support for Udovenko

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Several of Ukraine's leading parties and the country's Parliament made key announcements on January 15-16 on presidential elections - signs that the campaign season is moving into full swing.

While the Rukh and the Reform and Order parties officially declared they will back former Minister of Foreign Affairs Hennadii Udovenko for president, leaders of the National Democratic Party and the Social Democratic Party (United) announced the formation of a centrist coalition to include the Green Party and Ukraine's largest business association.

The political moves occurred after Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada passed a presidential election law that specifies the manner in which the 1999 elections are to proceed.

The law, approved on January 15 by a vote of 232-32, stipulates that presidential candidates can be nominated by political parties or a group of at least 500 voters. Each candidate must collect at least 1 million signatures, with a minimum of 30,000 each from 18 of Ukraine's 25 oblasts.

To be elected in the first round a candidate must receive more than 50 percent of the vote. If no single candidate receives a majority, then a second round will take place between the two highest vote-getters, during which a simple majority will be sufficient for victory.

The first round of elections is scheduled for October 31.

The election law requires that a candidate be at least 35 years old and have lived in Ukraine a minimum of 10 years.

Although the law will not go into effect until it is signed by President Leonid Kuchma, its passage prodded several parties to begin moving forward their election strategies.

Hours after the vote on the election bill, Prime Minister Valerii Pustovoitenko and former President Leonid Kravchuk announced the formation of the All-Ukrainian Zlahoda (Concord) Association of Democratic Forces, a political organization geared to unite centrist political movements into a single force for the elections.

With some 300 invited guests on hand - many there simply as interested observers - Mr. Pustovoitenko read a resolution that outlined the Zlahoda coalition's aims as: "confirming a democratic, law-governed and socially oriented state, [caring for] the well-being of its citizens, overcoming the estrangement between the state and society, and forming a society of solidarity that is true to general human values."

Prime Minister Pustovoitenko will co-chair the organizing committee of the political coalition along with Mr. Kravchuk, today a national deputy and a leader of the Social Democratic Party (United); National Deputy Ivan Pliushch of the National Democratic Party; Kyiv Mayor Oleksander Omelchenko; and Donetsk Mayor Volodymyr Rybak.

Other members of the committee include Zinovii Kulyk, until recently President Kuchma's minister of information, Yevhen Kushniarov, a former presidential chief of staff and current head of the New Ukraine political organization, and Anatolii Tolstoukhov, the current minister of Cabinet affairs (a position formerly known as minister of the Cabinet of Ministers).

The coalition brings together the major centrist political parties and figures. The National Democratic Party, the Green Party and what is left of the fragmented Social Democratic Party (United) without Yevhen Marchuk, as well as the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party form the core of the new alliance.

Zlahoda also has the support of two former prime ministers, current National Deputies Vitalii Masol and Yukhym Zviahilskyi, as well as backing from Anatolii Kinakh, the head of the Ukrainian Entrepreneurs and Industrialists Union, the largest business association in Ukraine, which is politically close to the president.

Although many on the organizing committee are past or current members of the administration or the government of President Kuchma, the prime minister, speaking at a press conference after the announcement, declined to say whom the movement would support in the October presidential elections. "We do not want people whose aim is to deny support to somebody. When the formation of the association is complete we will decide how we are going to proceed," said Prime Minister Pustovoitenko.

The prime minister denied that the coalition is essentially a political vehicle for the re-election of President Kuchma and underscored that the presidential administration is not behind Zlahoda's formation, a statement supported by President Kuchma's press spokesman Oleksander Martynenko.

However, political observers say the organization has little purpose except to work to get President Kuchma four more years in office.

"The people who have joined Zlahoda owe political debts to Pustovoitenko and Kuchma," said Serhii Naboka, a political analyst who is also director of the UNIAR (Respublika) news agency.

Mr. Naboka explained that many members of the new political organization would not benefit from a change in presidents. "For most of these people a change is not desirable. They can only continue their interests with support from the current president."

Mr. Naboka also said that he, as well as other political observers, do not think that Zlahoda will have a substantial impact on the presidential elections. "I do not believe that they will be effective. They will meet a few more times, make a few more declarations, and that will be it," said Mr. Naboka.

He explained that President Kuchma will rely on his oblast leaders and the presidential administration apparatus, as well as the support of a few business leaders, to put together an effective election campaign.

However Mr. Naboka said the January 15 event did have meaning as an official beginning of the president's re-election campaign. "This is a very important chapter in the political show of the presidential election season," said Mr. Naboka.

With much less pomposity, Rukh and the Reform and Order Party, which in early December formed a political coalition for the presidential elections, used the passage of the presidential election law to state that on January 16 they had agreed to support Mr. Udovenko, a former minister of foreign affairs and past president of the United Nations General Assembly, for the post of president of Ukraine.

The candidacy of Mr. Udovenko is supported also by the Christian Republican Party, which has joined the center-right coalition.

At a press conference on January 21, Vyacheslav Chornovil, leader of the Rukh Party, said that Rukh support for Mr. Udovenko is still subject to approval by a Rukh convention scheduled for May, but that he will remove himself from consideration as a potential presidential candidate.

"I will officially remove my name from consideration in favor of Hennadii Udovenko at the next party convention," said Mr. Chornovil.

Mr. Udovenko said it was premature to discuss what his presidential agenda might be. "Now the important thing is to lay a firm foundation for the political bloc we have formed and to organize."

Mr. Udovenko is the fifth candidate to throw his hat into the presidential ring. He followed President Kuchma; National Deputy Marchuk, former head of the Social Democratic Party (United), who recently left to form his own political organization; National Deputy Natalia Vitrenko, leader of the Progressive Socialist Party, and Serhii Holovatii, a former minister of justice under President Kuchma.

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