ELECTION WATCH: Presidential campaign marked by candidates' information wars (10/17/99)

ELECTION WATCH

Presidential campaign marked by candidates' information wars

RFE/RL Poland, Belarus and Ukraine Report

PRAGUE - In the first half of August, some Ukrainian regions witnessed the dissemination of leaflets attacking two presidential candidates: Socialist Party leader Oleksander Moroz and Social Democratic Union leader Yevhen Marchuk. The leaflets were signed by the Communist Party of Ukraine.

According to the three parties involved, as well as many commentators, those leaflets heralded the inauguration of "compromising information wars" in the Ukrainian presidential campaign.

The leaflets accused Mr. Moroz of "betraying the interests of the working people" and of forging a "criminal alliance" with Mr. Marchuk.

They warned that "fascists from the [Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists] urge their stooges to uphold these [two] gentlemen and create throughout the country militarized staffs to support their criminal alliance and organize provocations against the true defenders of the working people's interests: the Communists."

Komunist, the press organ of Ukraine's Communist Party, suggested in an article titled "Another Dirty Falsification" that the leaflets were the work of the "ruling regime."

The newspaper wrote: "It is known that the ruling regime long ago lost its peace of mind because of the growth in authority and influence of the leftist forces. ... It is possible [for the ruling regime] to bring back that peace of mind only by driving a wedge in the unity of the left-wing parties."

The heads of Mr. Moroz's and Mr. Marchuk's election staffs charged in a joint statement that the leaflets were disseminated by the All-Ukrainian Fund Social Protection, which is headed by Oleksander Volkov, an aide to President Leonid Kuchma. That statement came after several packages containing the leaflets in the Social Protection local office in Kamenka, a town in Cherkasy Oblast, were found by representatives of local branches of the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, the Social Democratic Union and the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists.

The Social Protection branch in Cherkasy Oblast stressed that the fund has nothing to do with the leaflets. Mr. Volkov accused the election staffs of "some presidential candidates" of resorting "to extremely dirty methods in order to discredit one candidate: the incumbent president."

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