Two parties announce new tactic: a referendum to remove Kuchma (05/13/01)

Two parties announce new tactic: a referendum to remove Kuchma

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - The Batkivschyna and Socialist parties have announced that they will attempt a different tack to oust President Leonid Kuchma by organizing a referendum to decide the fate of the head of the Ukrainian state.

The two parties, which have led the anti-Kuchma opposition in the last months, have turned to the highly uncertain method of a referendum to obtain the resignation of Mr. Kuchma, whom they accuse of criminal complicity in the Gongadze affair and wide-scale corruption, after having failed thus far to arouse widespread public antipathy through demonstrations and civil disobedience.

Standing before the offices of the Central Election Commission as about 500 supporters of the referendum shouted anti-Kuchma slogans, National Deputy Oleksander Turchynov, who heads the Batkivschyna faction in the Verkhovna Rada, read the questions that will be presented to Ukraine's electorate should the initiators collect the 3 million signatures required to put them on an election ballot.

The first question that the anti-Kuchma forces propose asks: Do you agree that because of what has occurred with Ukraine and the Ukrainian nation during the years of the rule of President Leonid Kuchma (catastrophic destruction of the economy, a general decline in the standard of living, criminality, corruption, a fall in Ukraine's authority in the world, massive human rights violations), he should voluntarily resign as a sign of his contrition in conjunction with Statutes 108 and 109 of the Constitution of Ukraine?

The second one queries: Do you agree that as a result of the rule of Leonid Kuchma an authoritarian, anti-democratic regime has taken hold in Ukraine, and because of this a European model of rule must be established in Ukraine after the president's resignation in which the people take part in the formation of a Cabinet of Ministers through their elected representatives to Parliament and take responsibility for its work?

Mr. Turchynov said the process for initiating the referendum would begin the same day with the submission of 246 signatures of representatives of political organizations who were ready to mount a petition drive to the Kyiv Mayor's Office. After being reviewed, the signatures would be certified and turned over to the Central Election Commission, which must then register the petition-gathering effort within 15 days.

Batkivschyna Party Chairman Yulia Tymoshenko, the former vice prime minister and now leader of oppositionist efforts to oust President Leonid Kuchma, announced at a press conference the same day that 70 political organizations back the referendum effort. She said the effort has the "total support" of Ukrainian society.

"This is a supraparty idea," said Ms. Tymoshenko.

She explained that she fully understands the government and the president will do all in their power to manipulate the outcome, but that her organization would not allow those forces to splinter the cause or falsify the results.

"We are strong enough to overcome their administrative resource. We will protect each ballot box," said Ms. Tymoshenko.

A week earlier, in suggesting that an organizational committee had formed to organize a referendum, she said she believed a vote could come in less than nine months.

According to National Deputy Oleksander Moroz, chairman of the Socialist Party, the organizational effort the opposition groups are attempting will be decentralized with political groupings working the regions of Ukraine where their support is greatest. He said financing would come from the government, as stipulated by law, after the required number of signatures is gathered.

And while both Mr. Moroz and Ms. Tymoshenko made it seem that the most powerful and best organized of the opposition groups, the Forum for National Salvation, of which they are members, had agreed to help with the referendum, that organization has yet to officially endorse the effort.

Oleksander Kryvenko, press secretary for the organization, said a scheduled meeting of forum members had not voted on the matter because a quorum was not present. He added that three leading members of the forum, National Deputies Taras Chornovil, Taras Stetskiv and Volodymyr Filenko, all of whom belong to the Reforms-Congress parliamentary faction, "strongly opposed" a national referendum and favored concentrating on an impeachment process.

Mr. Kryvenko said that between May 15 and 17 a group of lawmakers could move for a second vote to put an impeachment initiative on the parliamentary agenda. An earlier attempt on April 26 barely failed, falling 21 votes shy of the 226 votes needed. Pro-presidential factions currently control the Verkhovna Rada, but some political experts believe that in the upcoming battle over a new prime minister and ministerial portfolios oppositionist forces may find the votes to bring the impeachment matter to the parliamentary floor.

The oppositionist forces would also have to force an impeachment law through a resistant Parliament because there currently is no official procedure for forcing a head of state from office, even if it can be conclusively proven that the person egregiously violated the power of the office.

Many political experts believe that a national referendum to remove the president would not work either because it would not pass Constitutional scrutiny by Ukraine's Constitutional Court.

However, Ms. Tymoshenko and her supporters believe that the court paved the way for such a national poll in rulings issued on the April 2000 referendum, which requested changes to the Constitution to increase the power of the presidency. The Council of Europe roundly criticized the legal basis by which that referendum was conducted.

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