EDITORIAL: The choice is Kuchma's (09/22/02)

EDITORIAL

The choice is Kuchma's

Perhaps the most positive result of the nationwide protest action of September 16 - one that ended in the use of police violence against unthreatening demonstrators in Kyiv - is that Viktor Yushchenko, still the great democratic hope of the reform-minded portion of Ukraine's body politic and the country's most popular politician by far, climbed down off the political fence. In taking a side in the increasingly heated political confrontation and the widening chasm between the Kuchma administration and its supporters on one side and the oppositionist movement on the other, Mr. Yushchenko not only gave the anti-Kuchma movement teeth, he also saved his political future. The decision to oppose the president gave the nation reason to believe that Mr. Yushchenko is more than a paper tiger, that he will no longer seek appeasement and compromise while President Leonid Kuchma continues to thumb his nose at the young leader of the Our Ukraine bloc.

Mr. Yushchenko finally admitted on September 16 that the president has shown no desire to negotiate the demands put forward by his powerful political bloc, which took a third of the popular vote in the March parliamentary elections. Those demands include more transparency in government and the development of a parliamentary majority and a leadership in Parliament based on the electoral vote, and not by manipulation and intimidation of lawmakers, methods the president allegedly supported, according to Mr. Yushchenko. His move off the fence also gives the "Arise Ukraine!" protest movement an authentic claim to a serious nationwide opposition force and puts pressure on Mr. Kuchma to attempt to appease it.

Whether the movement will be sustained and whether it can maintain the fragile unity that thus far has allowed it to stick together, however, is an unanswerable question at present. Even during the September 16 demonstrations, the various political groupings, and especially the national democrats of Our Ukraine and the Tymoshenko Bloc marched apart from the Communists. While it was strange to see the black and red nationalist symbol alongside the hammer and sickle at the rally on European Square, it was also noteworthy that the Communists and the national democrats set up their tent cities at opposite ends of the street where the president's offices are located.

Perhaps the only thing that will keep this group locked tightly together in common purpose is the unconstructive actions of the president and his cohorts, who still refuse to begin negotiations and deal fairly with politically disaffected and significant numbers of the citizenry - some say up to 200,000 - who took to the streets of the nation on September 16.

In shutting down currency exchange points (on which Ukrainians rely heavily because they keep their money in U.S. dollars but spend it in hryvni) during the weekend before the demonstrations; by ordering a national television blackout on the day of the demonstrations; by forcing television stations to limit their coverage of events leading up to September 16 and the demonstrations themselves; as well as by leaving the country on a trip to a not-too-important conference in Austria, President Kuchma again showed his arrogance in the use of power and his disdain for democratic values and norms. It was, therefore, quite ironic that he told the Austrian newspaper The Standard that Ukraine is "learning democracy," and that the existence of an opposition movement and the rallies and protests of that day were evidence that already it exists.

Would Mr. Kuchma tell the Austrian newspaper the same thing today, in the light of the thuggery and violence his law enforcement officials carried out the morning of September 17? And does he now realize that by refusing to address Mr. Yushchenko's demands and to negotiate, he has lost this popular politician - one who firmly believes in political solutions and the art of the compromise - to the opposition.

President Kuchma has two options at the moment. We feel he must agree to a dialogue with the opposition and to meet with Mr. Yushchenko to negotiate the formation of a majority and a government. Part of the deal would involve accepting that Our Ukraine received by far the largest share of the electoral vote in the parliamentary elections and that it must wield its share of political power if Ukraine is anything close to a democracy. Alternatively, the president can risk a more wide-ranging uprising as people become emboldened by the brutish tactics of his law enforcement officials.

There is also a third option: President Kuchma can stop hiding behind rhetoric and Potemkin facades and call his administration what it seems to be at the moment: an oligarchic, authoritarian regime, not much different from the one in Belarus headed by strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka.

It's Mr. Kuchma's choice to make.

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