ROUGH DRAFT: A master of gamesmanship (02/25/01)

ROUGH DRAFT

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

A master of gamesmanship

The political crisis known as Tapegate may have peaked last week. Even with the formation of the Forum for National Salvation, a palpable sense exists that the anti-Kuchma movement is losing its momentum and that, unless a dramatic development occurs soon, the situation may simply fester for a while longer before changing into a sort of political herpes virus: an increasingly dormant although unresolved issue that messily erupts on the political surface when tensions are running high, only to quickly disappear without causing substantial damage.

After the second political rally organized by the anti-Kuchma forces under the "Ukraine Without Kuchma" banner drew less demonstrators than the initial one, it became apparent that the movement to oust the Ukrainian president needs to find something to continue to fuel it if it is to be sustained. The president's opponents - consisting of fractured elements from the right and left of the political spectrum who have been bereft of a united organization until recently and still lack a truly charismatic leader - have had a difficult time pinning responsibility on the president for what they believe is his involvement in planning criminal activity, including the disappearance of journalist Heorhii Gongadze. Their evidence is found on tapes of the president recorded secretly in his office by an unfaithful bodyguard in the summer and autumn months of last year and publicly revealed last November - tapes the president now acknowledges are indeed of conversations in his office.

In the immediate days after the low-turnout demonstration, President Kuchma's position was bolstered further when he received symbolic, although perhaps unintended, support from the leaders of the European Union and a political embrace by Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin, when both parties glad-handed with the president in separate meetings in Ukraine.

The European Union leaders, Javier Solana, Christopher Patten and Anna Lindt, gave only muted criticism for the lack of a speedy and transparent investigation into the death of the journalist. Meanwhile, President Putin stated that the crisis might even be good for democratic development, and then had a politically weakened Ukrainian president in need of support sign agreements bringing the country closer to Moscow.

A couple of days later President Kuchma suddenly stopped backtracking and found sufficient political will to issue a controversial message to the Ukrainian nation in which he castigated the movement to oust him as a bunch of discredited politicians and their followers looking to revive their careers at his expense. The statement appeared in written form, undoubtedly to record for posterity the official backing for the president's position and the signatures of the leaders of the two other branches of power, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Ivan Pliusch and, most importantly, Prime Minister Viktor Yuschenko.

By getting Mr. Yuschenko's endorsement, the president neutralized or perhaps even secured for his camp a person the opposition had hoped would lead them. Many had counted on Mr. Yuschenko, who has had strained relations with Mr. Kuchma since he accepted the post of prime minister, to eventually break with his boss and become the charismatic force that would rally the "Ukraine Without Kuchma" troops and propel them to the next level. The prime minister's decision to side with the president has left Yuschenko supporters in the anti-Kuchma camp - and there were many of them - dispirited and disappointed.

President Kuchma now has skillfully and successfully moved the debate away from the issue that should have remained at the center of this political crisis - who killed Gongadze, why and how - to a political debate in which he has put the focus on reinforcing the claim that those who are now calling for his ouster are the same political opponents who have opposed him for years (i.e., Pavlo Lazarenko et al, today represented by Yulia Tymoshenko and the Batkivschyna Party, and Oleksander Moroz and his Socialist Party). The president is selling the idea that an intricate conspiracy funded by Ms. Tymoshenko and Mr. Lazarenko, and driven by Mr. Moroz, the president's political archenemy, is working to overthrow the president at all costs. He has also thrown in an issue that always works to repel Ukrainians: that certain fascist forces are at work here as well.

In advance of results of an independent analysis of the various tape recordings that is expected to confirm that the voices on them are in fact those of the president and his top officials, Mr. Kuchma has gradually acknowledged that the tapes are authentic. However, he and his public prosecutor maintain that they were edited by experts to transform discussions on fighting corruption into conversations on illegal activity.

The president has begun an intensive public relations campaign, including interviews with Western mass media such as the Financial Times and BBC Radio, in order to present his take on the situation.

He also has thrown the opposition forces a sacrificial lamb in the hopes of satiating them, in the person of Leonid Derkach, director of the Security Service of Ukraine, the country's intelligence- gathering arm, whom many politicians have accused of extensive and illegal eavesdropping.

The moves by President Kuchma seem to be having an effect in neutralizing the opposition.

In addition, a survey released on February 12 by the sociological polling firm, SOCIS, shows that not many people are interested in the crisis in Kyiv - at least that's what the polling firm ascertained from a study completed on January 9. The results showed that within the population as a whole, merely 1 percent of all Ukrainians are ready to actively demonstrate for a change in the country's leadership. Some 25 percent said they are willing to wait for better times. If you think about it, this means that practically nothing will get them out on the streets. What most respondents accented is that they want jobs, food on the table and money in their pockets.

As Oleksander Stehnyi, head of political-social research at SOCIS, underscored, in the outlying regions there is almost no sense of the fervor felt in Kyiv. He said, "It is difficult to call what is happening a nationwide phenomenon."

The evidence suggests that even if the president is implicated in various criminal activities (if one is to believe what is said on the tapes) the Ukrainian people still have no overriding desire to remove him from office. The reason is obvious to those who have lived here for a while: the general public has the same degree of disdain for all politicians, generally speaking, as it may have for President Kuchma. The belief is that by getting rid of one you only make room for an equally corrupted politician, or worse, to take his place.

President Kuchma's public offensive against those who would destroy him politically is leveraged by the fact the country has no impeachment procedure. A draft bill has languished in the Verkhovna Rada for several years. To get the bill moving would require the support of Verkhovna Rada Chairman Pliusch, and the president's No. 1 supporter in Parliament is hardly likely to cooperate.

There are scenarios sketched by some members of the Forum for National Salvation that show how they plan to get the president's resignation.

One calls for drawing the crisis out to the spring, when warmer weather will bring onto the streets of Kyiv the protesting masses that opposition leaders currently believe remain shuttered in their homes for the winter. They maintain that at the same time a split will occur within the ranks of the business oligarchs who support (and some say control) the president as some begin to understand that the political crisis, which is already negatively affecting the economy, is indeed not going away. They will decide to sacrifice the president to save the economy and, ultimately, their own bank accounts. In the end, they will force the president's hand. Although plausible, this scenario seems a bit far-fetched; too much is left to fate for it to be considered seriously.

For now, the president has withstood a tough test and has shown political skill in controlling what could have become a lethal situation for his presidency.

But he has not answered the key question: Who killed Heorhii Gongadze? That is what he and his law enforcement officials need to do if, as they maintain, they weren't involved in the journalist's disappearance. They must stop stumbling and bumbling through the investigation and stop taking various political poses at which the public only snickers.

If, however, either law enforcement officials or the presidential administration are somehow involved in the tragic affair, there is no reason to believe they will now be forthcoming with evidence.

That leaves those who demand to know the truth with a single option: to coordinate their efforts with Western governments and organizations, and to maintain pressure on Ukrainian law enforcement officials to work closely with Western experts to force this case out of the shadows.

Only when Ukraine gets to the bottom of the Gongadze affair will all the parts of this complicated puzzle fall into place. Until then, everything else will remain political gamesmanship - at which Mr. Kuchma is a master.

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