Political parties and public organizations nominate candidates for president of Ukraine (05/23/99)

Political parties and public organizations nominate candidates for president of Ukraine

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - In a flurry of activity on May 14, more than a dozen political parties and public organizations named their candidates for Ukraine's presidential elections.

Most of the nominees had been known for weeks. Political parties needed only to await the May 14 date that marked the official launch of the presidential campaigns as spelled out in the election law passed by Ukraine's Parliament earlier this year.

Heading the list of candidates was President Leonid Kuchma, whose name was placed in nomination by several parties and public organizations, including the National Democratic Party, headed by Prime Minister Valerii Pustovoitenko, the Social Democratic Party (United) and the Liberal Party, as well as a student organization from Dnipropetrovsk.

As had been expected, Mr. Kuchma's nomination by the National Democrats caused a split in the party, with Chairman Anatolii Matvienko and leading party figures Volodymyr Filenko and Oleksander Yemets, along with several other members, announcing they would turn in their party tickets. With Mr. Matvienko's departure, the NDP elected Prime Minister Pustovoitenko as its new leader.

Mr. Matvienko's split with the party that he headed was caused by the successful effort of Kuchma supporters, many of whom have posts in either the presidential administration or the Cabinet, to ramrod the president's nomination through a party that had increasingly expressed concern about Mr. Kuchma's leadership.

Mr. Matvienko and his supporters have held talks on an election coalition and an alternative candidate supported jointly with the Rukh Party of Yurii Kostenko and with Viktor Pynzenyk's Reforms and Order Party, but so far little evidence exists that the sides will be able to reach agreement.

The two Rukh factions also held their separate party congresses and, as expected, the leaders of the respective parties became their presidential candidates. One Rukh officially nominated its chairman, Hennadii Udovenko, while the other chose Mr. Kostenko.

A Ukrainian court placed a barrier to the nomination of Mr. Kostenko on May 18 when it rejected an appeal from Rukh-Kostenko that the Ministry of Justice had improperly and illegally registered the Udovenko-led Rukh after the single party split in late February. Mr. Kostenko's Rukh may no longer be legally recognized after the court decision, so the party covered its flanks by having political organizations in the Zhytomyr and Rivne oblasts nominate its leader.

On the political left there were no signs that parties had found a common point man to lead them to victory in the presidential elections. Although there had been much buzz that the leftists would try to unite under a single candidate, the weekend party congresses of the Communist Party, the Socialist Party and the Progressive Socialist Party all nominated their party leaders.

Progressive Socialist leader Natalia Vitrenko, who is running head to head with President Kuchma in political surveys, said she would never consider working with the Communist Party of Petro Symonenko, the deputy whom that party nominated.

The Socialist Party also opted not to support a coalition candidate and chose Oleksander Moroz, whom most political analysts had considered Mr. Kuchma's greatest potential threat until he failed to get re-elected as Verkhovna Rada chairman.

Yevhen Marchuk, the former KGB official and ex-prime minister in the Kuchma administration, also found support for a run for the presidency. After losing his political base in the Social Democratic Party (United) to fellow party members Viktor Medvedchuk and Leonid Kravchuk, who decided to go with President Kuchma, Mr. Marchuk found support on Ukraine's political right. He was nominated by a rightist coalition of the Ukrainian Republican Party, the Social-Democratic Union, the Ukrainian Peasant Democratic Party and the Christian People's Union, and received a nod from the State Independence of Ukraine Association.

In other nominations, the Ukrainian Social Democratic Party decided to support Vasyl Onopenko, the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists nominated Ivan Bilas, and the Slavic Party chose Oleksander Bazyliuk. The For a Beautiful Ukraine Party chose party leader and businessman Hennadii Balashov as its nominee. The United Family Group nominated Oleksander Rzhavskyi.

With party caucuses out of the way, the candidates will focus on gathering signatures to have their names placed on the presidential election ballot. Each candidate must gather 1 million signatures by July 13, with at least 30,000 each from two-thirds of Ukraine's 26 regions, in order to proceed further in the process that culminates in voting on October 31.

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