While pushing for constitutional reform, Kuchma asserts he will not seek re-election (07/13/03)

While pushing for constitutional reform, Kuchma asserts he will not seek re-election

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - President Leonid Kuchma stated on July 10 that he would not seek re-election in 2004 under any circumstances.

The announcement was viewed as an effort to show the president as not dependent for his political future on a political reform bill that he initiated. The bill proposes extensive amendments to Ukraine's Constitution. However, the Verkhovna Rada, voting the same day, could not find a majority of votes to move the matter along the Constitutional road to implementation.

"I want the speculation in Parliament to end regarding the presidency. If some of these national deputies are indeed not blind, then they should have read the current bill and know that it would not be possible to extend my presidency. Under no circumstances do I want to extend my mandate or to take part in the election process," said Mr. Kuchma. "My aim is to see that the elections are held constitutionally and in a transparent manner."

While President Kuchma had several times rejected allegations and accusations made by various politicians in the last months that he was looking for a way to extend his stay as the head of state, the remarks were the first detailed statement by the president that he had no plans whatsoever to run for re-election.

Mr. Kuchma's statement, however, did not help get the package on political reforms through its first parliamentary test. That same day the Verkhovna Rada could not find the 226-vote majority to have the bill go to Ukraine's Constitutional Court for a review of its adherence to the country's fundamental law. Only 207 national deputies supported the proposition.

Much of the parliamentary opposition, including the largest political faction, the Our Ukraine bloc, called for a constitutional review before any vote would take place. The opposition introduced its own draft bill on political reform last week, authored by National Deputy Anatolii Matvienko, which called for presidential and parliamentary elections to remain separate. Opposition forces are maintaining that the presidential administration is doing all in its power not to allow the opposition bill to come to a vote

"Today the Parliament is being pressured to move only the president's proposals," explained Oleksander Moroz, leader of the Socialist faction, which along with Our Ukraine, the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc and the Communist faction makes up the opposition force in Parliament.

Since the Ukrainian president announced last August 24 that he would propose a new political system - distinct from the current presidential system - in which more authority would go to the prime minister through a parliamentary system of government, speculation had been rife that Mr. Kuchma was maneuvering to either give himself another term in office or at least extend his current one.

Members of the political opposition in the Verkhovna Rada had stated repeatedly that this was the reason they could not support the political reforms initiative, which on its face appears to be a significant push towards a democratic system more in line with the general European tradition of a dominant prime minister.

The presidential administration has made several changes to Mr. Kuchma's original proposals, which he first presented officially to the Verkhovna Rada on March 5. Those were based on the August 24 pronouncement by the president which called for implementing initiatives approved in a nationwide referendum held in April 2000.

That referendum, widely considered to have been fraudulent, successfully asked Ukrainians to call for constitutional changes to develop a bicameral Parliament; reduce the number of national deputies in the current Verkhovna Rada to 300 members; allow the president to dismiss the Parliament if it was not able to develop a parliamentary majority or approve a state budget in a given period; and deny lawmakers immunity from criminal prosecution.

The Verkhovna Rada never found the time to implement the referendum by voting on constitutional amendments. The initiative seemed dead until President Kuchma's unexpected announcement last August.

In the reinvigorated version, the president was ready to give the Verkhovna Rada the additional authority to select the prime minister and all Cabinet posts except for the "power" posts (procurator general, minister of defense, minister of foreign affairs and minister of internal affairs - but only after it formed a stable, working parliamentary majority. The president also called on all elections, whether to Parliament, the presidency or local and regional posts, to be held concurrently.

It was this last matter that made many lawmakers believe the president had found a way to extend his term. They suggested that if the political reform package was approved, Mr. Kuchma would delay presidential elections until 2006 to coincide with the next scheduled parliamentary elections in order to give himself another two years in office. Others said he might relinquish his presidential chair in exchange for the post of prime minister, which he could still legally hold.

There was a lingering belief that the president intended to find more time for himself in the central seat of Ukrainian power even when U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Carlos Pascual told reporters in Yalta on July 4, after a meeting with Mr. Kuchma, that the Ukrainian president had told him he believes common elections for all national and local seats could take place no sooner than 2014.

In the second half of June Mr. Kuchma made more changes to his proposals when he announced that he had removed the provision for a bicameral Parliament and would not press for a reduced number of lawmakers. The changes came after a three-month period of public debate, during which the president called for roundtables and open discussions at the local level and urged private polling firms to measure the pulse of the nation regarding the reform issues at hand.

President Kuchma and his supporters have stated that if the political reform package he has proposed is not approved before the presidential election in October 2004, the country may not see true political reform for several additional years.

Many political experts have stated that if the president's political reform package did not make it through to the Constitutional Court before the national deputies went on summer break this week it would die a slow death as politicians geared up for the unofficial start of the presidential campaign season this fall.

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