ANALYSIS: Ukrainian election as "strategic football" (04/07/02)

ANALYSIS

Ukrainian election as "strategic football"

by Jan Maksymiuk
RFE/RL Newsline

President Leonid Kuchma on March 22 termed "unprecedented" the March 20 resolution by the U.S. House of Representatives urging the government of Ukraine to ensure a democratic, transparent and fair parliamentary election on March 31. "Are we a nation, or are we a football playing field for strategic partners?" Mr. Kuchma asked indignantly.

Last week, Russian Ambassador to Ukraine Viktor Chernomyrdin was quoted as saying that Russia is with those parties and election blocs in Ukraine that call for the development and deepening of relations between the two countries. He suggested that some constituent forces of Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine bloc do not pursue such a goal, adding that this "cannot but worry us."

Other Russian officials and politicians were not so elusive about Moscow's political preferences in the Ukrainian ballot. Russian presidential administration chief Aleksandr Voloshin said that For a United Ukraine, the Social Democratic Party (United) of Ukraine, and the Communist Party of Ukraine are the forces that promote strengthening Russian-Ukrainian relations. "Unfortunately, [Our Ukraine] includes political forces that have overtly anti-Russian positions," he added.

And Dmitrii Rogozin, the head of the Russian State Duma's International Relations Committee, noted that if "nationalist forces" win the upcoming parliamentary election in Ukraine, Moscow and Kyiv may face problems in bilateral relations. U.S. officials are extremely reserved about openly declaring with whom their political sympathies are in Ukraine, but it is no secret to anyone that Washington would like to see the pro-Western and pro-reform Yushchenko emerge as the winner of the March 31 vote. This position is widely shared in Europe. While not seeing Ukraine as ready for integration with Europe right now, European politicians seek to make the country a friendly buffer zone separating the expanding NATO and European Union from Russia.

"Ukraine has a European history, European life, and European civilization," OSCE Parliamentary Assembly head Adrian Severin asserted in Kyiv in March. But many in Ukraine, among both the electorate and politicians, have remained unimpressed.

Despite the fact that as many as 33 parties and blocs are vying for mandates in the 450-seat Verkhovna Rada, the current election seems to have polarized the Ukrainian electorate into two camps - one of the "Western option" (supporters of Our Ukraine) and the other of the "pro-Russian option" (supporters of For a United Ukraine, the Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party) - to a much greater extent than any previous election campaign in the country. Polls by several independent polling centers concurrently suggested over the past few months that Our Ukraine might obtain up to 50 percent of the vote in western Ukraine and definitely less than 10 percent in eastern Ukraine, while the pro-government For a United Ukraine and the Communists may count on substantial support primarily in eastern and southern regions.

Confronted with the unpleasantly high popularity of Mr. Yushchenko's Our Ukraine among voters in western Ukraine, For a United Ukraine campaign planners have resolved to mobilize as yet undecided voters by appealing to anti-U.S. sentiments in the country. Mr. Yushchenko's Our Ukraine, along with the vociferously anti-presidential Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc and the Socialist Party, has been accused of preparing a U.S.-sponsored "Yugoslav-scenario" coup in Ukraine. According to this sinister plan, the opposition was allegedly going to declare the official results of the March 31 election falsified and create a separate Parliament based on an alternative vote calculation. An important role in this plan allegelly was to be played by U.S.-trained sociologists from the Razumkov Center of Political and Economic Studies.

Moreover, a documentary broadcast three times by ICTV Television and 1+1 Television this month unambiguously suggested that Ukraine's infamous tape scandal - which implicates President Kuchma and other top officials in the murder of independent journalist Heorhii Gongadze - was used by Washington to exert pressure on Mr. Kuchma in order to depose him and install Yushchenko. For many observers of Ukrainian politics, the documentary was primarily intended to sow distrust in Mr. Yushchenko by suggesting to Ukrainians that he is plotting behind the scenes with Americans to the detriment of his native country.

To polarize voters even more, Communist lawmakers questioned the legality of the registration in 1992 of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kyiv Patriarchate and accused it of appropriating property from the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Moscow Patriarchate. It is hardly possible to imagine a more improbable defender of "canonical Orthodoxy" than the Communist Party, but this issue was purposely publicized by the Ukrainian Communists. The Communists know that the faithful under the Kyiv Patriarchate are more likely to support the pro-Western Mr. Yushchenko in the election, so they have tried to curry favor with those under the Moscow Patriarchate in order to win their votes or at least to inflame the religious antagonism and deepen Ukraine's "west-east split" for the duration of the election campaign.

It is no wonder that Ukrainian voters, bombarded with these "strategic football" issues in the state-controlled media and a cacophony of accusations and counter accusations of foul play, were actually not paying much attention to what the competing parties and blocs propose in socioeconomic portions of their election programs. Many polls predicted that Our Ukraine - with a moderately reformist economic program - could obtain some 100 seats in the Verkhovna Rada, but that the pro-presidential For a United Ukraine - by using administrative levers, intimidation of voters, and massive advertising in the media - would get no fewer. And this would almost certainly mean that a new government would be very similar to the one Ukraine now has.

The current election campaign was not an exception to the string of election campaigns that independent Ukraine has already faced: the stakes were very high and the play was habitually foul. But when summing up post-election gains and losses, it turns out that the preservation of the status quo is the only unquestionable consequence of all the preceding political commotion. The best prospect for Ukraine after March 31 would be to see a Parliament that could prevent President Kuchma from amending the Constitution and staying in office for a third term.

What Ukraine primarily and urgently needs is to embrace a positive and efficient economic program, not a civilizational or geostrategic choice between the West and the East, or between Washington and Moscow. This is what all Ukrainians, including those from "nationalist" Halychyna and "socialist" Donbas, would apparently accept without reservations and animosities. Unfortunately, Ukraine's political elites still appear to be incapable of offering and/or agreeing on such a program.

Jan Maksymiuk is the Belarus, Ukraine and Poland specialist on the staff of RFE/RL Newsline.

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