1999: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

Elections: it's good to be the incumbent

Ukrainians turned out in large numbers in two rounds of presidential elections in 1999, but the vote will be remembered as much for the highly questionable and much criticized campaign techniques utilized by both incumbent President Leonid Kuchma and the other candidates as it will be for the landslide victory achieved by the president.

Mr. Kuchma led a group of 13 candidates in the first round of voting on October 31, but did not receive the required 50 percent-plus-one required to win the poll, which forced a run-off with second place finisher Petro Symonenko of the Communist Party. On November 14 President Kuchma handily defeated his opponent 56 percent to 38 percent to gain another five years in office and attempt to finish the economic and political reforms that he failed to complete in his first term.

Both rounds saw more than 70 percent of the Ukrainian electorate go to the polls. Ukraine's politically lethargic youth was the biggest surprise, with some 73 percent voting in the first round, mostly for the incumbent.

The election season, which officially began on September 1, but unofficially consumed most of 1999, was marked by controversy, mudslinging, unwieldy political associations and an assassination attempt against one of the leading candidates.

President Kuchma set the tone for the campaign season at the close of 1998 when he told a gathering of regional journalists on December 15 in Kyiv that the presidential poll would be much like the parliamentary elections in March of that year, with voters being offered a stark contrast: a return to the old ways of communism or continued economic reforms and democratic development.

He also foresaw a key development of the 1999 presidential race when he predicted that democratic forces would have difficulties uniting around a single candidate.

"Democrats cannot unite themselves, which is to the detriment of Ukraine," said Mr. Kuchma. "Each sees himself with the bulava" (mace - a symbol of authority).

To begin unifying the center and center-right, which Mr. Kuchma needed if he was to have any hope of re-election, the president tasked Prime Minister Valerii Pustovoitenko with developing a coalition of political parties that would support his re-election bid. It was also the first indication of the extent to which the Ukrainian government would be involved in the election campaign.

On January 15 the prime minister, with ex-President Leonid Kravchuk at his side, announced the formation of the All-Ukrainian Zlahoda (Concord) Association of Democratic Forces. Mr. Pustovoitenko said the association's aim was to confirm "a democratic, law-governed and socially oriented state, [caring for] the well-being of its citizens, overcoming the estrangement between the state and society, and forming a society of solidarity that is true to general human values."

The Zlahoda coalition brought together the largest centrist political parties: the National Democratic Party, the Social Democratic Party (United), the Green Party, the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party of Ukraine.

Mr. Pustovoitenko said the alliance had not yet chosen a presidential candidate, and that it was not a fait accompli that it would endorse Mr. Kuchma, although eventually it did.

The next day, the National Rukh Party and the Reform and Order Party, two organizations in Ukraine's political mainstream that had formed a political coalition in mid-December, announced they would support the presidential candidacy of Hennadii Udovenko, an ex-foreign affairs minister and ex-president of the United Nations General Assembly.

Vyacheslav Chornovil, the leader of Rukh, whose own candidacy had been anticipated by many, said at the time that he would not run for the highest post in the land. "I officially will remove my name from consideration in favor of Hennadii Udovenko at the next party convention," said Mr. Chornovil.

Mr. Udovenko became the fifth candidate to throw his hat into the ring unofficially, following President Kuchma, National Deputy Yevhen Marchuk, the ex-prime minister and a former head of Ukraine's State Security Service, Natalia Vitrenko of the Progressive Socialist Party and former Justice Minister Serhii Holovatyi.

The coalition-building that had begun in earnest was prompted by the passage of a new election law by the Verkhovna Rada. Passed on January 15, the law stipulated that a presidential candidate can be nominated by political party or group of at least 500 voters, that each candidate must obtain 1 million signatures to get his name on the ballot, with a minimum of 30,000 each from 16 of Ukraine's 25 oblasts, and that the winner of the vote must obtain more than 50 percent of the vote or else a second-round run-off would occur between the two highest vote-getters, with the winner being the one who received the most votes.

With the campaign season gearing up, a group of non-governmental organizations announced on March 22 that it had formed a coalition of its own - one that would monitor the course of the campaigns and the elections in order to ensure that the electoral process was democratic, free and fair. The group, which started with 63 NGOs and ended up involving more than 200, was led by the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, a citizens' group that eventually played an important role in monitoring election day voting in both rounds with its 16,000 registered observers.

The first pre-election surveys appeared at the beginning of April, and one of them was a surprise. A Democratic Initiatives Foundation poll showed that Ms. Vitrenko, the Progressive Socialist nominee, led a field of potential and announced candidates, ahead of President Kuchma, the expected early favorite, by 21 percent to 19 percent. Mr. Symonenko, who would eventually face off with the incumbent in November, came in third at 10 percent. In another survey, released by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology at the same time, President Kuchma led the pack, 22 percent to 17 percent for Ms. Vitrenko, followed by Oleksander Moroz of the Socialist Party at 9 percent. Mr. Symonenko showed only about 6 percent support in the second poll.

Most political pollsters explained Ms. Vitrenko's popularity as being a result of her populist declarations for the need to raise pensions and wages.

A month later, on May 14, as prescribed by the election law, political parties and organizations began nominating their candidates. Most of the nominations were expected. President Kuchma led the way, having his name placed in nomination by several parties, including the National Democratic Party, the Social Democratic Party (United) and the Liberal Party, all of which were major pillars of the Zlahoda political coalition.

The National Democratic Party's support of the president caused an internal split the same day its nominee was announced and led to the departure of NDP Chairman Anatolii Matvienko from the top post and the party, along with other party leaders who had questioned the advisability of supporting a president who had shown little ability to affect economic change. Prime Minister Pustovoitenko replaced Mr. Matvienko as the NDP's chairman.

The Rukh Party, which had split earlier after the ouster of its long-time leader Mr. Chornovil, announced officially that it would support Mr. Udovenko; the splinter group of Rukh decided, not surprisingly, to support its newly appointed chairman, Yurii Kostenko. Because the other Rukh had been denied official status by the Ministry of Justice, however, Mr. Kostenko was nominated by political organizations in the Zhytomyr and Rivne oblasts.

Ukraine's political left flank, which had stated that it, too, would attempt consolidation around a single candidate to ensure a victory, failed miserably to do so. Each of the four major leftist parties nominated their party leader. Initially they produced only three candidates: the Communists went with Mr. Symonenko, the Socialists with Mr. Moroz, the Progressive Socialists with Ms. Vitrenko.

Then, on May 29, the fourth leftist party, the Peasant Party led by Verkhovna Rada Chairman Oleksander Tkachenko, which many thought would support Mr. Moroz, produced a political shocker in the young campaign season when it supported Mr. Tkachenko's candidacy. Since the beginning of the year Mr. Tkachenko had repeatedly said he had neither plans nor desires to run for the presidency.

By June the field of candidates had exploded to 19 individuals from all parts of Ukraine's political spectrum, including other leading political figures such as Mr. Marchuk, nominated by a coalition of right-oriented parties and organizations, and Vitalii Kononov of the Green Party, as well as political unknowns like Mykola Haber of the Patriotic Party, Oleksander Rzhavskyi of the Single Family Party and Oleksander Bazyliuk of the Slavic Party.

A campaign law requirement that forced the candidates to disclose financial statements produced snickers in some Ukrainian political circles. Ukraine's Central Election Commission began releasing the reports on May 21. Among the candidates, many of whom were considered to be very well off and were not ashamed of bounding about town in shiny, top-of-the-line Mercedes Benz automobiles, only one, Mr. Rzhavskyi, admitted to making any substantial amount of money in 1998.

The Single Family Party nominee reported an income of 1.36 million hrv for 1998. But the others all stated that they were just as poor as the average Ukrainian, and some worse off still. While President Kuchma claimed an income of 19,214 hrv and ownership of a 350-square-meter apartment, Mr. Symonenko's statement showed that he earned a paltry 8,906 hrv in 1998 and owned no real estate except for a 24-square-meter garage in which he presumably parked his Russian-made car.

As the presidential campaigns began moving into high gear, the mayoral election in Kyiv, which many political analysts believed would be a test of the Kuchma campaign strategy, showed that the best re-election plan is to have concrete successes of which to boast. Challenged by the millionaire owner of the Dynamo Soccer Club, National Deputy Hryhorii Surkis, who seemed to have the support of the president, Kyiv Mayor Oleksander Omelchenko, nonetheless won a landslide victory on May 30, with a margin of 76.4 percent to 16.5 percent - much larger than even he had predicted.

Kyivans wholeheartedly supported the mayor's tackling of pervasive day-to-day problems, as well as his restoration of cultural monuments, renovations of public dwellings and improvements in the city's transportation network.

Two months later, however, a district court of Kyiv Oblast ruled, after a complaint by Mr. Surkis, that the mayor had usurped his authority to gain an edge in the campaign and had "significantly affected" the outcome. Almost immediately Ukraine's Supreme Court set aside the lower court decision.

Back in the presidential political sweepstakes, some of Mr. Kuchma's opponents also began to charge the president with unfair campaign practices.

On May 31, during a meeting with members of the Ukraine's regional press, Mr. Moroz said the media in the capital city had been bought off by the president's campaign team, and made first mention of an information blockade in pre-election Ukraine.

"We ourselves are to blame for living in an atmosphere of information terror ... Ukraine's salvation is in deposing the incumbent president. Let us unite and break the information blockade," said Mr. Moroz.

A week later Mr. Moroz charged that the president's administration was blocking his presidential campaign further by refusing to give him access to petitions distributed by the CEC, which he needed to collect the 1 million signatures required to get on the election day ballot. "We are facing a deliberate and planned campaign aimed at preventing my participation in the elections," said Mr. Moroz. After filing a complaint with the Supreme Court, the judicial authority ruled in Mr. Moroz's favor and ordered the CEC to issue 150,000 more signature forms to his campaign.

Fourteen of the 19 declared presidential candidates met the July 12 deadline imposed by law and succeeded in gathering the required 1 million signatures to support their continued candidacies. But the signatures had to pass CEC scrutiny first and that would lead to another major debacle in the 1999 elections.

At the head of the field in this and at most every juncture of the election process was President Kuchma, whose petitions were accepted and reviewed first by the CEC. He also was the first to be officially registered for the October 31 election on July 1, along with Mr. Symonenko of the Communist Party. Both candidates gathered far more than the required minimum, Mr. Kuchma submitting 1.89 million and Mr. Symonenko some 2 million signature. Mr. Tkachenko of the Peasant Party submitted the most, 2.05 million. In the end, 15 candidates submitted at least 1 million signatures.

The CEC, citing falsifications and improper signature-gathering procedures, rejected six of the candidacies, all lesser-known politicians, which caused a major stir. The rejected candidates - Vasyl Onopenko of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Party, Yurii Karmazin of the Defenders of the Homeland Party, Mr. Kononov of the Green Party, Mr. Rzhavskyi of the Single Family Party, Mr. Bazyliuk of the Slavic Party, Mr. Haber of the Patriotic Party - filed appeals to Ukraine's Supreme Court, which ruled in their favor. It found that the CEC had failed to follow registration procedures as outlined in the elections law. Specifically, it stated that the CEC should have informed each candidate of any problems with the petitions within a five-day period and then allotted another two days to gather the balance required to attain the 1 million mark. The nation's highest civilian court ruled that all six candidacies should remain valid.

CEC Chairman Mykola Riabets said on August 18, as the candidate registration fiasco hit its apex, that the Supreme Court's ruling could lead to a series of further court actions by candidates and ultimately to the October elections being ruled invalid.

The beleaguered chairman said that, by forcing the registration of six candidates, which according to the CEC had failed to meet minimum requirements, the Supreme Court had established a legally questionable field of candidates

Even as it became evident that Ukrainians would have many candidates from which to choose two political surveys taken in July showed that most voters would stick with the major players and that President Kuchma's lead over the field was widening. He was followed by Ms. Vitrenko, who continued to show staying power even as political analysts continued to predict her imminent political demise in the polls. Following her was Mr. Symonenko, who was picking up quite a bit of steam as the race entered the final leg.

While Ukraine marked its eighth anniversary of independence on August 24 in the nation's capital with a military parade, replete with military fly-overs, four presidential candidates were showing firepower of another sort in Kaniv, the final resting place of Ukraine's national bard, Taras Shevchenko.

Beneath the huge Shevchenko monument on the banks of the Dnipro River, candidates Tkachenko, Moroz, Marchuk and Volodymyr Oliinyk, the mayor of Cherkasy who was nominated by a civic organization, announced they had formed a political alliance to defeat the incumbent. They said that they soon would settle on one from the quartet to be their single candidate and waxed optimistic that they would attain victory in the first round.

In the end, the Kaniv Four, as the group came to be called, could not temper their individual egos and ambitions, and disintegrated just days before the first round.

President Kuchma received a major push in his re-election effort on August 31 when 20 political parties - nearly a quarter of the 76 registered parties of Ukraine - announced at a political shindig that they would support his candidacy.

But even as the Kuchma re-election locomotive gathered ever more steam, Ms. Vitrenko's political train remained not far behind, according to opinion polls, which many politicians in Ukraine continued to question.

September polls, rightly or wrongly, showed that as summer ended more than 23 percent of the electorate still supported Ms. Vitrenko as their choice for president, putting her behind Mr. Kuchma, who held a strong lead with 30 percent support, but ahead of Mr. Symonenko, who was at 17 percent. Most surprisingly, polls showed that, in a second-round run-off, those voters who said they would definitely vote favored Ms. Vitrenko over both the president and the Communist candidate.

Ms. Vitrenko showcased her bombastic and outspoken style at the first candidates' debate, which was sponsored by the Ukrainian Federation of Trade Unions on September 21. There voters had their first chance to hear 14 of the 15 presidential hopefuls lay out their political plans and strategies before local and national federation leaders, who were to decide whom to support after the roundtable.

Ms. Vitrenko elicited catcalls and derisive shouts from the crowd when she accused the federation of putting on a Potemkin-type show because, as she asserted, the group had already made up its mind to support the incumbent president. Then, smirking cat-like, she walked out of the hall. The federation eventually decided to refrain from endorsing a candidate until after the first round of the elections.

The Kaniv Four candidates continued to attack the president's campaign strategies as unethical and illegal. They issued a statement in which they said the president was loading the 225 territorial election commissions with his own people. The statement said that central authorities "taking advantage of the short-sightedness of local executive bodies, have seized leading posts in territorial election commissions in order to be able to falsify the election results in an unimpeded manner."

It pointed out that the president's representatives would lead 80 of the territorial commissions; while Mr. Tkachenko's people would lead 16; Mr. Moroz's,14; Mr. Marchuk's,10; and Mr. Oliinyk's, 14.

The attack on the president by the Kaniv Four continued on September 22 when Mr. Tkachenko used his power as the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada to introduce a resolution to have the CEC de-certify the candidacy of Mr. Kuchma for the unconstitutional use of his office in his campaign efforts. The resolution referred to a refusal by the National Television and Radio Company, a state enterprise that controls the UT-1 government station, to broadcast the Verkhovna Rada Government Day session. Twelve of the 15 presidential candidates were also members of Parliament.

During a three-hour debate in Parliament on the issue, Chairman Tkachenko accused the presidential administration of inappropriately using state funds and utilizing the state militia and security services in the re-election campaign.

The Verkhovna Rada also brought Europe into the developing political morass. An investigative team from the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly flew to Kyiv the first week of October, at the behest of Mr. Tkachenko and the Kaniv Four, to review allegations of election improprieties. It concluded that the Kuchma government was intimidating the press and not allowing for a free and fair campaign season.

"We are a bit alarmed at the situation," said Anna Severinsen, the lead rapporteur of the PACE delegation.

The investigator noted the government's use of tax, health and fire inspectors to intimidate and bring pressure to bear on media outlets that were not supporting the president in their broadcasts. It specifically pointed to the case of the STB channel, whose financial accounts were frozen by tax investigators. The PACE team called on the government to ban all types of inspections of media organizations until the elections were completed and allow equal access to television broadcasts, including on the state-controlled channel, for all candidates.

The single largest abomination of these scandal-plagued elections was the attempt on the life of Ms. Vitrenko on October 2 in the city of Kryvyi Rih. Two grenades were hurled into a crowd lingering near a public hall in which Ms. Vitrenko had just completed a campaign appearance. Thirty three people were injured, none fatally. The first explosive device landed several feet from the candidate while she shook hands and signed autographs for well-wishers. She escaped serious injury only due to the efforts of her bodyguard who sustained serious head injuries when he took the brunt of the blow, as he pushed Ms. Vitrenko back toward the building, probably saving her life.

"My reaction was to race to the car. If I had done so, the second grenade would have hit me," said Ms. Vitrenko after the incident.

The Security Service of Ukraine almost immediately announced it had arrested two individuals - Russian nationals - and that one was a brother of Serhii Ivanchenko, a campaign organizer and official of presidential candidate Moroz's campaign team.

Mr. Moroz fiercely denied any connection to the incident, but a relentless television campaign by the Kuchma team left many Ukrainians wondering.

Two weeks later, with the Vitrenko imbroglio still simmering, the Kaniv Four, which had promised to name the person from among them who would be their candidate by October 11, announced that it had done so, but due to the need for further negotiations refused to divulge the name. Three days later Mr. Tkachenko announced that Mr. Moroz was the choice. But in the first tangible sign that cracks were appearing in the coalition, Mr. Marchuk's campaign team stated that their candidate, while supporting the Kaniv Four choice, would continue with his candidacy.

The Kaniv Four said that in return they would continue to support Mr. Marchuk's election efforts. The other two Kaniv candidates, Messrs. Tkachenko and Oliinyk, failed to say when they would withdraw their candidacies. The group also said that it retained the right to make the decisive announcement, and any changes to it, on October 25. Four days later, on October 18, Mr. Tkachenko said he would heed the request of his Peasant Party and not withdraw his candidacy.

On October 25, confusion reigned as the alliance disintegrated after it announced that the members had changed their minds and now Mr. Marchuk was their choice. Immediately after the statement, Mr. Moroz said at a hastily called press conference that he would continue to run, at the behest of his Socialist Party, but would also support Mr. Marchuk.

The next day Mr. Tkachenko stunned reporters with the declaration that he was endorsing the Communist Party candidate, Mr. Symonenko. He explained that without Mr. Moroz, who he said had betrayed the alliance, the Kaniv Four no longer had the ability to achieve its goal and, therefore, was no longer a political force worth maintaining.

The disintegration of the Kaniv Four five days before the elections, and with it a reduced chance for victory by Mr. Moroz, whom the Kuchma campaign team had long said was its primary threat, left the president's team feeling certain of victory. The president continued to lead most polls right up to the last day that the election law allowed surveys to be published - two weeks to the elections..

Meanwhile the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, which had achieved legitimacy and respect in the way it monitored the election to Parliament in March, 1998, issued a warning on October 19 that the elections conceivably could be nullified because of last-minute changes to the election law proposed by Parliament.

It said that national deputies had proposed 30 mostly inconsequential changes, that could, nonetheless confuse local election commissions. It also warned that situations could develop in which commissions in many local districts would not have a quorum to allow voting precincts to open and operate.

Nonetheless, on October 31 the precincts were open and the electorate voted in large numbers, giving President Kuchma a substantial margin of victory over his closest challenger, Mr. Symonenko. Mr. Kuchma finished with 36.5 percent, while the Communist leader took 22.2 percent.

Mr. Kuchma, in a reversal of his political fortune in the 1994 presidential elections found large electoral support in the western oblasts, but did not take a single eastern oblast, save for his political home base of Dnipropetrovsk. The two leaders were followed by Ms. Vitrenko, who finished surprisingly weak at 11 percent. Mr. Moroz, also at 11 percent, and Mr. Marchuk at 8 percent came next. The two Rukh candidates, Mr. Udovenko and Mr. Kostenko, followed, with 2.1 percent and 1.2 percent, respectively.

International political observers gave the first round elections a passing grade for fairness, although all judged the pre-election campaigns, particularly President Kuchma's, to be fraught with improprieties and illegal tactics.

Mr. Kuchma and Mr. Symonenko quickly began lining up support from their defeated opponents in the first days of the run-up to the second round. While Mr. Symonenko gained the support of five ex-presidential hopefuls, Mr. Kuchma took what for him was the coup de grace when he received the backing of Mr. Marchuk - whose 2.1 million votes many considered the key to a Kuchma victory in as much as they represented an electorate that was both anti-Kuchma and anti-Communist.

The endorsement was not without its political cost. Mr. Marchuk demanded and received a high-level administrative portfolio - secretary of the National Security and Defense Council - and the incorporation of a portion of his political platform with its heavy accent on anti-corruption measures into the president's post-election agenda.

Some concern existed on the part of the Kuchma campaign that a low turnout would favor Mr. Symonenko because his backers were sure to turn out as they always did. The fears were unfounded as even more Ukrainians voted on November 14 than did in the first round - some 74 percent of eligible voters. Mr. Kuchma won by a landslide.

Remarks made by international election observers, however, cast a shadow over the Kuchma victory. The largest observer organization, the delegation of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said a day after the vote that Ukraine's elections had been affected by a planned and coordinated effort by the government to utilize all its power to re-elect the incumbent. Simon Osborn, head of the OSCE observer delegation said it had "uncovered clear evidence that this campaign by state institutions was systematic and coordinated across the country."

Although Mr. Simon underscored that Ukraine had violated OSCE rules and regulations, which it had sworn to uphold when it took membership, he did not go so far as to label the elections tainted.

The chief reason for that, as Mr. Osborn stated, was the large margin of victory by the president, and the difficulty in quantifying the effect of the government's influence on voting patterns.

With the elections over, the president went about setting out his plans for the next five years, which in the short term, as he explained, would include a drastic intensification of economic and administrative reforms, the formation of a centrist majority coalition in the Parliament that would be able to form a government, and a proposal for a referendum to change the Constitution and to allow for the establishment of a bicameral national legislature.

The president, who hoped for improved relations with the national deputies in order to get long-stalled economic bills moving, again faced a confrontational legislative body days after his re-election when he requested that his inauguration ceremony be moved from the Parliament Building to a Kyiv concert hall. After reaching agreement with the Verkhovna Rada leadership for a change of venue and agreeing to move the date to accommodate a parliamentary recess, the president's request was rejected by a floor vote.

But, after the president threatened to make the change anyway, via a presidential decree, more back-room deal-making occurred and, finally, the deputies relented the morning of the inauguration. However, three leftist Parliament factions - the Communists, Progressive Socialists and Hromada - held out and boycotted the event, and even conducted a minor protest outside the site of the inauguration.

More than 300 guests, including delegations from 20 foreign governments, witnessed Mr. Kuchma take the oath of office as the third president of Ukraine since independence in 1991, and the fourth in its history. In a new tradition, Viktor Skomorokha, the head of the Constitutional Court, handed the president the official symbols of his office: a gold medallion engraved with a trident, the official executive stamp and a gold "bulava" (mace), the symbol of executive authority.

Presidential decree on official symbols

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, December 26, 1999, No. 52, Vol. LXVII

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