President says he will veto Ukrainian election law, again (10/07/01)

President says he will veto Ukrainian election law, again

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - President Leonid Kuchma indicated on October 3 that he will reject yet another version of a new election law for Ukraine's parliamentary elections, a move that is expected to inject uncertainty and confusion into the electoral process days before it is to start.

Meanwhile, the much-respected Committee of Ukrainian Voters, a citizens' group, said the same day that, although the process remains in the air without a new law, many parties and politicians have already started the campaign season.

Speaking in the city of Uzhhorod in western Ukraine, President Kuchma said he sees major problems in the newest version of an election law that he has already vetoed three times. Although national deputies eventually caved in to his unyielding demand, made over the course of most of the year, that any new law limit by-party representation to half the elected members of the new Parliament scheduled to be chosen on March 31, 2002 - Mr. Kuchma vetoed three earlier bills that had given political parties larger proportions of overall seats - the president found still other problems in the way the current statute is constructed.

"I can state demonstratively that the problems [with the new election law], which relate to the statute itself, give me the right to say that today the president may simply have no alternative but to veto it," said Mr. Kuchma.

The Ukrainian leader said two major issues with which he did not agree will force him to return the bill to the Parliament. First, he believes the length of the election process needs to be reduced to 90 days - from the current 170 days - which if heeded by the national deputies would push back the start of the campaign from the currently scheduled date of October 12. Second, the president said, the requirements for party representatives to sit on local and regional election councils must be opened up, and should not be limited to those parties that crossed the 4 percent threshold to receive seats in the 1998 elections to the Verkhovna Rada.

Mr. Kuchma also rejected assertions that the veto is a political ploy to move the elections back so that there would be less time for campaigning.

"This is not a political game on the part of the president," said Mr. Kuchma.

The president expressed optimism that most of the changes he will propose would be accepted by the national deputies after they review them.

While the president's detractors have insisted they believe Mr. Kuchma wants to shorten the campaign season to give him the ability to better control where the votes will fall, he has insisted that the shorter period is in keeping with Ukraine's desire to fall into line with European traditions.

Oleksander Chernenko of the Committee of Ukrainian Voters said on October 3 that he is suspicious of the president's action, not the veto itself - he acknowledges that the law passed by the national deputies on September 27 is far from the best election law possible - but the fact that the president held the bill for 15 days before vetoing it. This occurred even though it was the fourth time the president had seen a version of the same draft law and well knew the legal and political ramifications involved.

"We find this highly suspect," said Mr. Chernenko. "It smacks of outright politics."

He added that the veto would complicate the electoral process for the country's Central Election Committee, which has established deadlines for organizing and carrying out the elections, as well as for some political parties and candidates. Some others will not be affected, noted Mr. Chernenko, because they have already begun their campaigns, albeit illegally.

He said that cultural programs and charitable activity on the part of politicians has increased dramatically in the last month, as have illegal campaign techniques.

Ihor Popov, chairman of the Committee of Ukrainian Voters, said that his organization, which has joined a pre-election, nationwide citizens' initiative called Your Voice, has already identified three key violations of campaign law and democratic traditions.

First, he said, his group has identified instances in which local and regional leaders, as well as factory managers, have threatened or intimidated their employees to join specific political parties. "First they force them to join, then they force them to campaign, then they force them to vote for certain political parties," explained Mr. Popov.

Equally disturbing, Mr. Popov said, are increases in cultural and charitable events, which are officially not campaign-related but too often are sponsored by candidates and national deputies or their associates. He said that the gift-giving includes goods and services, and everything from food baskets to automobiles.

Mr. Popov explained that the major threat here is not the charitable work itself. The problem is that too often the money comes from government administrative resources or from corrupted wellsprings and leaves clean candidates with an uneven political playing field.

A third illegal activity identified by the committee is forced contributions from organizations and corporations to political parties, according to Mr. Popov.

Mr. Chernenko, the committee's press secretary, also noted that increased party activity in the months before the campaign season opens has resulted in huge increases in party membership lists. He noted that one political party, which he alluded to as the Regional Party of Mykhailo Azarov, had increased its party rolls from 5,000 to 230,000 members in merely six months, mostly in the Donetsk region.

The first political surveys regarding the March 2002 parliamentary elections suggest that up to five parties and three political blocs will surpass the 4 percent barrier to achieve seats in the next Verkhovna Rada. In two separate polls - one carried out by Democratic Initiatives, the other by the Center of Social Monitoring and the Ukrainian Institute for Social Research - the Communist Party, the Social Democratic Party (United), the Green Party and the National Rukh of Ukraine achieved approval ratings of more than 4 percent. The Batkivschyna Party also made it past the mark in the Democratic Initiatives poll.

The Communists led the field by far, with 19 percent, and 21 percent respectively, in the two polls, with the other parties receiving no more than 4 to 6 percent in either poll.

When the political blocs that have formed in the run-up to the elections were included, the Communist Party still led the way in the Center for Social Monitoring/Ukrainian Institute for Social Research poll - even while going solo - with 17.2 percent of the respondents supporting it. Closely following it was the Our Ukraine bloc, led by ex-Prime Minister Viktor Yuschenko and consisting of the two Rukh Parties, the Reform and Order Party and the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, with 16.5 percent of the respondents.

Our Ukraine was followed by the bloc known as TUNDRA, which comprises the Labor Party, Regional Party, National Democratic Party and the Agrarian Party - often referred to as the oligarchs - with 8 percent of the vote. Also making the cut was a bloc of the Socialist Party and the Social-Democratic Party, with 4 percent support by the respondents.

In the Democratic Initiatives poll, in addition to the individual political parties, the Our Ukraine bloc made the 4 percent cut, with 7 percent support from respondents who stated they would definitely vote for it in the upcoming elections.

Also in the Democratic Initiatives poll, 32 percent of the respondents stated that, of all Ukrainian politicians, they most trust Mr. Yuschenko. Far back in the number two spot came Petro Symonenko, the leader of the Communist Party, with 19 percent trust. Prime Minister Anatolii Kinakh fell in at the number three position, with 13 percent support.

Other well-known leaders, such as Hennadii Udovenko, leader of the National Rukh of Ukraine, Viktor Medvedchuk, leader of the Social Democratic Party (United), Oleksander Moroz, leader of the Socialist Party, and Yulia Tymoshenko, leader of the Batkivschyna Party, could muster merely 7 to 8 percent support from the respondents.

As for President Kuchma, 10 percent of the 1,200 respondents in the Democratic Initiatives survey said they trust him, while 52 percent said they do not. The survey, conducted on September 6-11, has a margin of error of 3 percent.

Of the 2,204 surveyed in the Center for Social Monitoring/Ukrainian Institute for Social Research poll, 27 percent said they trust the Ukrainian president. That survey was conducted during September and has a margin of error of up to 2.1 percent.

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