Albright says Kuchma can be influenced to ensure fair elections (03/10/02)

Albright says Kuchma can be influenced to ensure fair elections

by Yaro Bihun
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

WASHINGTON - Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright says that Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma can be influenced by the United States and the West into ensuring that the campaign process leading up to the March 31 parliamentary elections, and the elections themselves, are conducted fairly.

"He does think - at least that's the way I read it - that what Washington thinks about him is important to him," Dr. Albright said on March 4, during a briefing about her visit to Ukraine in February as part of a pre-election monitoring mission of the National Democratic Institute (NDI), of which she is now chairman.

During her meeting with the Ukrainian president, Dr. Albright said, she was surprised about how "very concerned" he was about the resolutions in the U.S. Congress on the subject of elections in Ukraine.

(President Kuchma's concern may have been caused by a mistranslation of the resolutions, she said. The resolutions, which note that there is a new electoral law in Ukraine but that it needs to be carried out, were translated to say that Ukraine needed to pass a new electoral law.)

"And it made me really understand very vividly the importance of pressure from all of us," she said. "He could be made to understand the importance of his legacy before Ukraine and how he will be regarded by people that he does think are important."

"I think that he does care. He would like to see himself as one of the main reformers of the post-Soviet world, and I think he's beginning to see that he's not regarded that way," Dr. Albright added.

NDI and other monitoring groups have repeatedly expressed concern about a number of abuses during the election campaign: about the media being subject to harassment, journalists being intimidated, the state-controlled media openly demonstrating a pro-government bias, opposition candidates being denied access to the media as well as to public resources which were being used to help the pro-government party.

In addition to the NDI briefing, the coming elections in Ukraine also were the subject of a briefing on March 1 organized by the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE).

Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, William Green Miller, who accompanied Dr. Albright to Ukraine and took part in both briefings, said he thinks President Kuchma understands the connection between the perception of the election and the international reputation of Ukraine as a nation and his leadership.

"The difficulty is that he is in the middle of a power struggle, in which his interests may require - in his own mind - the kind of actions that are taking place in this election," he said.

The outcome of the election is becoming more and more apparent, Ambassador Miller said, with the polls - which he sees as a very important component in the election process - consistently showing former prime minister Viktor Yushchenko's coalition in the lead, followed by the Communists and the two oligarchic factions in the third position.

NDI President Kenneth Wollack said what he found most striking were polls showing that more citizens of Ukraine believe that the upcoming election will not be credible as opposed to those who believe that it will be credible.

"And under these situations in transitional environments all over the world, when you have large segments of the population that have lost faith in the political processes, then extraordinary steps are necessary to build or rebuild confidence in elections," he said.

"While the law has been improved, the question is: How are the laws being applied and how are the laws being followed? And if there is the sense that the law has just become a facade for the same type of pre-election abuses that have taken place in other elections, the real damage to democratic development before, during and after this election, I think, is going to be quite detrimental," Mr. Wollack noted.

Former congressman Sam Gejdenson, who also accompanied Dr. Albright in Ukraine, said he witnessed some of the reported abuses during his visit. He likened the situation there to what has happened in other former East-bloc countries and former Soviet republics, where there has been a consolidation of power, and those in power are using government resources to stay in power.

Dr. Albright said that the West should make clear its disapproval of certain behavior by Ukraine. "But I am not for isolating Ukraine," she added. "I think that would be a mistake. There needs to be a constant flow of information and people and Western discussions there, and a constant need to include them and push them."

"I think that one has to be very nuanced with Ukraine, because we do not want to kind of push it into a Belarusian situation," she said.

In response to a question, however, Dr. Albright said that the various political leaders with whom she met did not express any concern about a Russian influence in the election.

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