EDITORIAL: The Kuchma mandate (11/21/99)

EDITORIAL

The Kuchma mandate

It is not certain whether a majority of Ukrainians wholeheartedly supported a second term for newly re-elected President Leonid Kuchma or whether illegal government intrusion into the election process artificially influenced voting patterns.

We probably will never know whether the results were tainted to the extent that they affected the final outcome. It must be said from the outset that to rig more than 5 million votes - the difference between Mr. Kuchma and Petro Symonenko - is a monumental task even for a government apparatus as large as Ukraine's.

International organizations have given President Kuchma the benefit of the doubt and, although severely critical, have decided that he was chosen by a majority of Ukrainians. However, we do hope the president hears the call of the international community and makes appropriate changes in policy and law to ensure that the next elections are free of the intimidation and censorship that marked the 1999 presidential vote.

Ukrainians have now rejected communism in four general elections; in presidential votes in 1991, 1994 and 1999, and the parliamentary elections of 1998. Even though Communist leaders continue to proclaim that the next election is theirs, the reality is that their political strength is waning as their electorate, the elderly, is dying off.

Now is the time for the president to stop straddling the ideological fence. It is time to accelerate full speed towards a free market economic system, democracy and Europe. The president seems to understand this. He has announced that he is preparing an ambitious 100-day plan to begin his new term with a keenly defined strategy to reinvigorate economic reforms. His campaign team is waxing enthusiastic that real reforms in the marketplace and in the bloated and resistant bureaucracy are forthcoming.

They are even proposing a risky Constitutional change to establish a bicameral Parliament, such is their enthusiasm and optimism. The president and his team think that Ukrainian citizens will support a bicameral national legislature in a popular referendum. They believe the populace is sufficiently disgusted with the current Verkhovna Rada to go along with a major restructuring of the legislative body.

Mr. Kuchma also is convinced that he can stimulate the development of a centrist majority coalition, which he would allow to form the government - a move he believes would get long-stalled reform bills moving.

His is a grandiose plan that inevitably contains many holes and weak points.

For one, it seems to ignore the fact that the president has had major problems getting a consensus even from within his own administration on how to move dynamically on major reform measures such as bureaucratic streamlining. Little to date suggests that the situation has changed sufficiently to be able to proceed today.

Another type of paralysis could hinder the president's second term, as well. The president made untold numbers of promises to bring together the large political coalition that got him re-elected. Today he is beholden to many political partners. He will be pressured to pay political dividends to cronies and cohorts, which in the past has been the source of many of the charges of corruption and the oligarchical tendencies that Ukraine is accused of harboring today.

The hope here is that the president will resist pressure to develop policies based on the narrow-minded interest of the political business elites that will now try to ride the Kuchma wave. He must work for the people and the nation - as he said he intends to.

This is Mr. Kuchma's last term as president (a two-term limit is enshrined in the Constitution) and probably his last election. We believe the president will want to leave a historical legacy of Ukraine's prosperity, peace and stability. That will take determination, a vision, and a resolve to ignore political fleas on the Ukrainian body-politic.

Ukraine's electorate has told President Kuchma that he should continue to hold the reigns of power and steer the country in the new millennium. His is the vehicle of change, we hope.

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