Nine candidates continue in race for president (08/08/99)

Nine candidates continue in race for president

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Amid much controversy and accusations of political impropriety, nine presidential candidates have received the blessing of Ukraine's election authority to move on to the October elections.

On August 1 the Central Election Commission finished analyzing and counting the petitions of the 15 presidential hopefuls who had submitted at least 1 million signatures in support of their candidacies, as required by Ukraine's election law. Six of the candidates were rejected for not meeting that mark after the CEC deemed hundreds of thousands of signatures they submitted to be fraudulent.

The candidates registered by the CEC represent the leading Ukrainian political parties. All but one had been expected to move to the final showdown in October. The individuals whose names will appear on the October 31 presidential election ballot are: President Leonid Kuchma, who is supported by the National Democratic Party and the Social Democratic Party (United); Petro Symonenko (Communist Party); Natalia Vitrenko (Progressive Socialist Party); Oleksander Tkachenko (Peasant Party); Oleksander Moroz (Socialist Party); Hennadii Udovenko (Rukh Party); Yurii Kostenko (Rukh II); and Volodymyr Oliinyk, president of the Association of Ukrainian Cities and mayor of Cherkasy.

Only Mr. Oliinyk is not considered a major political player, and his was the only surprise candidacy registered by the CEC. Mr. Oliinyk, who is running as an independent, barely made the minimum. The CEC accepted 1.02 million of the 1.86 million signatures submitted.

CEC officials said they had found massive fraud and signature irregularities in petitions submitted by all the candidates, but particularly among the six candidates it had rejected. The inconsistencies included signatures of voters who were no longer among the living and names of villages that do not exist.

Green Party Chairman Vitalii Kononov, probably the most prominent candidate of those who were turned away by election authorities, said at an August 1 press conference that the six rejected candidates would file an appeal with Ukraine's Supreme Court. He said the CEC had become overtly politicized and that it was time for an independent judicial body to determine what specific criteria were used by the CEC to determine how signatures were ruled valid and which candidates would be registered for the elections.

"This puts into question the notion of democracy for Ukrainians," said Mr. Kononov.

The Green Party candidate accused the CEC of succumbing to pressure from Ukraine's most powerful political and commercial interests in deciding who would be registered.

"We believe that in this instance a certain pressure was put on the CEC by oligarchies that have or are being formed in this country," Mr Kononov said. "The oligarchs believe that power must be in the hands of one person, an autocrat - whether Kuchma, Kononov, Moroz or whomever - through whom they can pursue their individual interests."

Mr. Kononov said that because he and his party have pushed for political reform and supported constitutional changes to lessen presidential authority, he was deemed an unacceptable candidate by those forces.

Mr. Kononov also questioned whether the list of registered candidates had not been pre-ordained. He cited a quote by Mr. Riabchuk, published in Kievskie Viedomosti on July 20, in which the CEC chairman is alleged to have said, "I don't know who prognosed what and for whom, that there would be seven or eight candidates. A more realistic figure, which we were given, was nine."

Mr. Kononov added, "How many candidates do we have today? Nine."

He said that he could not name who he thought were the back-room decision-makers because he did not have the hard evidence to prove his assertions.

CEC Chairman Riabchuk has fought with the press and with the candidates on several occasions in defending the independence of his commission. At the beginning of June he faced accusations that he was playing favorites in dispersing additional official signature petitions first to President Kuchma, while denying them to the person considered the president's arch rival, Socialist candidate Moroz. Mr. Moroz accused the CEC chairman of being controlled by the presidential administration.

The chairman of the CEC is nominated by the president, but must then receive approval from Ukraine's Parliament.

Mr. Riabchuk explained that the delay in getting additional ballots to Mr. Moroz was a matter of logistics and formalities.

The CEC chairman had warned, even prior to the conclusion of the registration process, that many signatures would be rejected. As petitions began to pour into the CEC central office in early July, Mr. Riabchuk said at a press conference that if the signatures submitted had to meet the stringent requirements of criminal investigative bodies, none of the candidates would have made the 1 million mark.

The CEC threw out hundreds of thousands of signatures in the case of almost every candidate. However, many of them had collected almost double the minimum required.

Mr. Kononov rounded up merely 1.56 million signatures in all 26 regions of Ukraine, a lesser number than most of the candidates. The CEC threw out over one-third of those, which left him more than 35,000 short of the minimum.

The Green Party candidate admitted that perhaps he had been a bit too complacent in believing that he had a sufficient amount.

Other losers in the CEC registration process had even higher percentages cut. The CEC rejected more than 60 percent of Mykola Haber's signatures. Oleksander Bazyliuk and Yurii Karmazin had about 50 percent of their signatures negated by the CEC, while Oleksander Rzhavskyi and Vasyl Onopenko suffered cuts of more than 40 percent.

In the case of Mr. Karmazin, who leads the Defenders of the Homeland Party, the CEC said it even found petitions supporting the candidacies of Mr. Udovenko and Ivan Bilas among his submissions.

Another controversy has also taken center stage in the early days of the campaign season which began officially on August 2. Four presidential candidates have called on the entire field of nine to sign a statement in which they pledge to run clean campaigns free of mudslinging and unethical manuevering. The four who have signed, Messrs. Marchuk, Moroz, Tkachenko and Kostenko, have put pressure on the other five presidential hopefuls, and most intensely on President Kuchma, to sign the agreement.

President Kuchma has refused, stating that he will not join in an accord with candidates who have already tried numerous times to cover him with mud and more.

Mr. Udovenko and Ms. Vitrenko also have refused to sign the declaration.

There has been no comment from the Symonenko camp on whether their candidate would join the pact, while Mr. Oliinyk would only say that he is reviewing the document.

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