ANALYSIS: Ukraine's presidential election: regionalism and left turns (11/14/99)

ANALYSIS

Ukraine's presidential election: regionalism and left turns

by David R. Marples

The October 31 presidential election in Ukraine did not provide a majority to any candidate, but incumbent Leonid Kuchma has a healthy lead over his nearest challenger, the leader of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Petro Symonenko. However, the elections have revealed a marked regionalism in Ukraine and confirmed the gradual leftward trend in Ukrainian politics since 1991.

According to the head of the Central Election Commission, Mykhailo Riabets, President Kuchma won 36.49 percent of all votes, followed by Mr. Symonenko with 22.24 percent, Socialist leader Oleksander Moroz (11.29 percent), Progressive Socialist leader Natalia Vitrenko (10.97 percent) and former Prime Minister Yevhen Marchuk (8.13 percent). None of the other candidates polled more than 5 percent of the vote.

Committed candidates of the left received about 47 percent of votes; those of the center-right, approximately 46 percent. The turnout was 70.15 percent.

The left-right stalemate takes on a more ominous complexion when examined by regions. Western Ukraine, comprising the most nationally conscious oblasts that were incorporated into the Soviet Union more than two decades later than the rest of Ukraine, voted solidly for Mr. Kuchma or the other pro-market, pro-Western candidate, Mr. Marchuk.

Mr. Kuchma gained an outright majority in all but one of these six provinces, and received his highest total, almost 70 percent, in the Ivano-Frankivsk region. The president failed to win outright in any other region, however, though he performed respectably in the capital city of Kyiv and was clearly the favored candidate among Ukrainians living abroad.

Mr. Symonenko, on the other hand, received a majority in only the Luhansk Oblast, a coal mining area in the east, that has long been dissatisfied with the Kuchma regime, and led in five others, the neighboring Donetsk Oblast, Crimea, the city of Sevastopol, and the Kharkiv and Zaporizhia oblasts.

The president performed poorly in Donetsk and in the heartland of central Ukraine. However, Mr. Kuchma's totals were the highest in the industrial base of Dnipropetrovsk and in the south, and he trailed Mr. Symonenko by only a narrow margin in Crimea. He has thus retained some of the support he had in the 1994 election in these regions, while gaining western Ukraine.

What do these results signify for the future of Ukraine, and specifically the runoff election between Messrs. Kuchma and Symonenko on November 14? The likelihood is that Mr. Kuchma will find sufficient votes to take him over the 50 percent marker. Mr. Symonenko is unlikely to unite all the forces of the left, and votes that were cast for Mr. Moroz in particular could well be divided fairly evenly between the two leaders. Mr. Marchuk's supporters will almost certainly join the Kuchma camp. Though his standing is impressive, Mr. Symonenko's total is unlikely to rise significantly outside Eastern Ukraine and the Crimea, and he would need a major propaganda campaign to convince supporters of the other candidates to join his team (even though the candidates themselves may be prepared to support him). To date, however, President Kuchma has kept firm control over the media and, thus, one can anticipate that the incumbent president will be re-elected barring some unforeseen disaster or political blunder on his part.

If one compares the October 31 results with the two previous presidential elections, then a definite leftward trend can be discerned. In 1991 western Ukraine voted solidly for its Rukh candidate, the late Vyacheslav Chornovil, a former dissident and longtime opponent of the Soviet regime, while eastern Ukrainian and Crimean votes ensured that Leonid Kravchuk became Ukraine's first president.

By 1994, alarmed at what appeared to be strong Russophile tendencies of the challenger, Mr. Kuchma, western Ukrainians switched allegiances to Mr. Kravchuk, but once again their smaller numbers (they comprise about 12 percent of the electorate) were not sufficient to elect their favorite.

In 1999, however, most western Ukrainians have turned to Mr. Kuchma as the only candidate capable of holding back the forces of the left. Over each five-year period, therefore, the profiles of the candidates have gravitated toward the left. The two candidates of the democratic and pro-Western Rukh did poorly (Mr. Marchuk at 8.13 percent and Yurii Kostenko at 2.2 percent), particularly when compared to the 23.3 percent of the vote received by Mr. Chornovil in 1991.

Thus, the elections reveal a divided society and one perturbed by recent economic and social trends. The left has emphasized falling living standards, low wages and unemployment, NATO aggression against Yugoslavia (as a reason for Ukraine to look favorably on membership in the Russia-Belarus union), the apparent lack of interest on the part of the European Union to Ukraine's request for associate membership, and the constant demands being made of a fragile cash-strapped economy by the International Monetary Fund. Another irritant has been the alleged lack of good faith on the part of the G-7 countries in coming up with funds promised for the closure of the Chornobyl nuclear power station.

President Kuchma, in turn, has promptly fired governors of the central Ukrainian provinces in which he fared badly, a tactic in line with his general policy that his continuing presidency is the only guarantee of a stable society in the future.

The president has responded in makeshift fashion to the various issues he has faced since the summer of 1994, never adopting the sort of wholesale reforms favored by pro-marketeers, but maintaining a Euro-centric and particularly pro-United States foreign policy. At the same time he has stabilized relations with the Russian Federation and maintained an open border with the authoritarian dictatorship in Belarus.

Thus, through his careful foreign policy and preservation of the status quo, Mr. Kuchma has - barely - satisfied the electorate. The encouraging aspect is that Ukraine will likely delay, at least for another five years, a return to a Communist leader.

Dr. David R. Marples is a professor of history and acting director of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. A version of this article appeared in the Edmonton Journal.

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