ROUGH DRAFT: Ukraine endures political games (03/17/02)

ROUGH DRAFT

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

Ukraine endures political games

Ukrainian campaign politics is an incredible game - perhaps the only one of its kind in the world. With two weeks left before the country votes on a new Parliament, the events of the campaign season have been tainted with irregularities, violations of law, cut-throat maneuvering, mudslinging and disinformation. But, given Ukraine's electoral history, it can only be called business as usual.

It is as if a bunch of merry jesters had sold their souls to the devil and been given free rein of the country for a three-month period, like a Fellini film, but twisted from an absurd to a cynical point. In the final weeks of campaigning, where else would the president of the country be accused of illegal arms sales, while two other high-ranking officials were said to have utilized their government positions for personal gain? Where else would a regional leader call his court-ordered removal from the electoral process sufficient reason to cancel the elections and begin a move to have his region secede from the country?

Then there is the relatively more banal (though very detrimental) stuff: the use of government authority and resources to deny candidates access to television broadcast time and impede the organization of campaign meetings and rallies.

If the point were to entertain the nation, instead of pick legislators to clean up the mess left by more than 70 years of Soviet rule and the additional 10 years of mostly irresponsible rule that has followed, everyone would be enjoying the show that Ukraine's politicians are putting on. The problem here is that there are dire consequences if the game ends badly. The goal must be to build democracy and an open society, and that begins with free and fair elections. From that perspective, it is a tragic contest that we are witnessing.

While Adrian Severin, president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said in Kyiv on March 13 that he believes the elections in Ukraine could still be considered free and fair if what is left of the process evolves properly, his organization has already said that there is strong evidence that campaign improprieties are occurring. On March 11 the OSCE filed the first complaint by an accredited international observer organization with Ukraine's Central Election Commission to protest the monopoly that one political bloc has over political advertising on the government channel UT-1.

While the OSCE did not name the organization, perhaps only a few cloistered monks deep in the caves of the Pecherska Lavra could not have known that the European organization meant the For a United Ukraine election bloc.

The bloc, led by President Leonid Kuchma's Chief of Staff Volodymyr Lytvyn, has utilized its access to power and government resources to effectively control government-owned newspapers, radio and television. Oblast governors and municipal mayors who support the political bloc strictly control the type of advertising allowed on local billboards and even on telephone polls.

On March 4, after returning from a campaign swing through the eastern oblasts, Viktor Yushchenko, the leader of the Our Ukraine Bloc, complained that in Mariupol the lights at a public hall where he was holding a rally were turned off. Speaking at a press conference a week later, he said that in Donetsk he could not find a single campaign banner, poster or billboard in support of any political organization other than the For a United Ukraine Bloc. He said that only on the road from the airport into town his delegation counted hundreds of their ads.

On the other hand, the Social Democratic Party (United) [SDPU] - another group of what are called "the oligarchs" - which in the past was adroit at grabbing many privately held media outlets, including national and local newspapers and three national television networks, is now exploiting the strategic advantage it enjoys in the mass media.

Today it controls the two most popular networks in the country, Inter and Studio 1+1, and has advertised extensively there while giving other parties no more than token access to the airwaves it controls.

Meanwhile, Kyiv Mayor Oleksander Omelchenko has been accused of utilizing his own questionable version of tactical gamesmanship in ordering municipal workers to tear down posters of candidates not part of his Unity Party, or at least having them pasted over with Unity Party campaign information.

The election season began with a disenchanted Ukrainian National Rukh Party press secretary revealing audiotapes of a private conversation between Mr. Yushchenko and Mayor Omelchenko, in which they allegedly were conspiring to remove Verkhovna Rada First Vice-Chairman Viktor Medvedchuk, who is also the chairman of the SDPU, from his parliamentary post. That was followed by a court order barring Yulia Tymoshenko, a former first vice prime minister who today heads the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc and a prime opponent of President Kuchma, from leaving Kyiv due to charges of corruption that have never been resolved, which was followed by another court order removing the first one. While she is currently campaigning actively throughout Ukraine, authorities have effectively blackballed her from television. Today no ads by her or her party are shown on the small screen.

In the last week the games and tactical moves have gotten a bit more desperate, and the players still shriller. Here are a few examples.

National Deputy Oleksander Zhyr, an ex-general in the Security Service of Ukraine, accused President Kuchma of being complicit in the illegal sale of arms to Iraq. Mr. Zhyr, a strong critic of the president who heads the ad hoc parliamentary committee investigating the death of journalist Heorhii Gongadze, said on March 13 that he has documented proof to support his allegation.

On March 6, Mr. Zhyr's associate, Hryhorii Omelchenko, accused Mr. Lytvyn, President Kuchma's chief of staff and head of the For a United Ukraine Bloc, of abuse of authority in lobbying commercial interests on his own behalf. Mr. Omelchenko, who like Mr. Zhyr also once held a high position in the Security Service of Ukraine, leveled the same charges against Mykola Azarov, the head of the Tax Administration and a leading member of Mr. Lytvyn's electoral bloc. While the charges against the president and his two officials are very serious, one must wonder about the timing in releasing the information two weeks before election day. It must be noted that both Mr. Zhyr and Mr. Omelchenko are aligned with Ms. Tymoshenko in the parliamentary race.

Ukrainians witnessed another pre-election tactic last week, one that ultimately failed, after Leonid Hrach, chairman of the Parliament of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the leading Communist Party figure there, was banned from taking part in elections to the regional legislative body by a local court for allegedly filing a false financial statement. After the ruling, he stated that he would not allow elections on the peninsula to proceed and would call for a referendum to have Crimea joined with Russia. He has since backed off on both threats, but is yet to be reinstated as a local candidate.

Then, on March 13 in Nikopol, an unknown person threw a Molotov cocktail through a window of the Kanal 5 tele-radio station, destroying communications equipment and setting ablaze one of its cars. The incident occurred the same day that Robert Menard of the international human rights group Reporters Without Borders asked President Kuchma to intervene to determine why police action was taken after Mr. Yushchenko of Our Ukraine was given airtime on the channel in that eastern Ukrainian city.

The ubiquitous and irascible Progressive Socialist Natalia Vitrenko, who is running for Parliament as the leader of the Natalia Vitrenko Bloc, got into the act on March 8 when she took part in a television debate, but only briefly. After accusing the Studio 1+1 television network on which she was appearing of being "a tool of the United States" and then several times calling her opponent, Yulia Tymoshenko, a "bandit," she stomped off the stage, having added to her reputation as unpredictable, controversial and a public relations master.

Viktor Chernomyrdin, Russia's former prime minister and current ambassador to Ukraine, put his imprint on the election process as well when he commented on March 5 that the "mass visits" by Western leaders in the weeks leading up to the elections were a "humiliation and an insult to Ukraine." He did not explain, however, how the undue influence he believed the West was trying to have on the elections differed from his own free access to President Kuchma or the close ties he has with many of Ukraine's political leaders.

What has made these elections so closely contested and so fraught with electoral improprieties, at the least, is that the national deputies chosen on March 31 will have much to say about how presidential elections shape up two years hence. The successes, or failures, the leaders of the major political parties and blocs achieve will determine how they will be positioned in the bigger race: the run to achieve the highest office in the land. In this country, where the presidency has extensive powers, winning that election campaign is akin to a coronation.

The Lytvyns, Medvedchuks and Yushchenkos are not campaigning merely to gain seats for their people and themselves in the next Verkhovna Rada, they are also jousting with their opponents to determine who has the political power and prowess to gain the psychological and electoral edge as the presidential campaign nears. Some of them believe that gaining that advantage is worth pushing democracy aside. For them it is an all-out war in which the end justifies the means. Unfortunately this is what Ukraine continues to endure.

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