ANALYSIS: Pro-government coalition proposes Yanukovych as presidential candidate (05/02/04)

ANALYSIS

Pro-government coalition proposes Yanukovych as presidential candidate

by Jan Maksymiuk
RFE/RL Belarus and Ukraine Report

The leaders of pro-government groups in the Verkhovna Rada decided at a meeting on April 14 to field Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych as their joint candidate in the presidential election slated for October 31. The decision was communicated to the public by Stepan Havrysh, coordinator of the parliamentary pro-government coalition.

"There were no long discussions, and the decision was made unanimously," Mr. Havrysh said, adding that the meeting was attended by Mr. Yanukovych and President Leonid Kuchma, along with the leaders of the Agrarian Party, the National Democratic Party, the Party of Regions, the Industrialists and Entrepreneurs/Labor Ukraine caucus, the Social Democratic Party - United, the Democratic Initiatives group, the Popular Choice group, and the People's Power group.

Mr. Havrysh also said Mr. Yanukovych was appointed as the joint candidate of "democratic forces" on the condition that he will finalize the constitutional reform that suffered a setback in the Verkhovna Rada on April 8.

The rather inconspicuous nomination of Mr. Yanukovych has spawned a lot of disparate comments in the Ukrainian media, all of which, however, include the same explicit or implicit question: Is this true? Has President Kuchma really decided to throw his support behind Mr. Yanukovych in the presidential race? Have other heavyweights of the pro-Kuchma camp really decided to squash their political ambitions and back the presidential bid of the "Donetsk don," as some non-state media refer to the Ukrainian prime minister?

One explanation for President Kuchma's move may be his intention to react in a politically impressive manner to the discouraging rejection of the constitutional-reform bill by the Verkhovna Rada on April 8. By fielding Mr. Yanukovych for the presidential race and making him pledge to push for a political reform despite the recent failure, Kuchma may have wanted to show that he still knows what to do and remains in control of the political game in Ukraine.

Likewise, by making Mr. Yanukovych a "guarantor" of further reformist efforts Mr. Kuchma may want to prevent the pro-government parliamentary coalition from splitting up and, possibly, fielding an uncoordinated number of presidential candidates to challenge Our Ukraine leader Viktor Yushchenko.

The threat of such a split became clearly visible on April 8, when the constitutional-reform bill promoted by President Kuchma was supported by 212 deputies from the pro-government opposition, which was significantly below the majority of 226 votes required to adopt most decisions in the Verkhovna Rada. Besides, Ukrainian media have reported that an unspecified number of pro-government coalition lawmakers elected under a first-past-the-post system in 2002 decided to set up a separate caucus in the legislature.

If President Kuchma is quite serious about promoting Prime Minister Yanukovych as a joint candidate of the pro-government coalition, not as a tactical figurehead who may be dumped at some moment in the future, then of course Mr. Kuchma has made a reasonable choice. Mr. Yanukovych, with surveys giving him nearly 15 percent support among the electorate, is by far the most popular politician in the Kuchma entourage. And the post of prime minister is widely believed to be the best springboard for launching and conducting a highly efficient election campaign in Ukraine.

The behavior of potential allies - oligarchs from the pro-Kuchma and, in theory, pro-Yanukovych coalition - is a different question. One of them, former Prime Minister Valerii Pustovoitenko, has already announced that he does not like Mr. Yanukovych as a presidential candidate. Mr. Pustovoitenko, who leads the National Democratic Party, suggested on April 19 that his party may field a different presidential candidate. "I think that a joint candidate [of the pro-government coalition] should be the one who is supported not by individual party leaders and political figures but by the overwhelming majority of Ukrainian citizens," Mr. Pustovoitenko said in a public statement.

Thus, there is a big question mark hovering over Mr. Yanukovych's political fate. Most parties forming the pro-government coalition will reportedly decide whether to support the prime minister in the presidential election during their congresses planned for June. And they may simply refuse such support if they are instructed by President Kuchma to do so.

By supporting the government's action plan for 2004 last month, the pro-government parliamentary coalition has stripped itself of the right to vote Mr. Yanukovych out of his office within the following year and thus deprive him of administrative leverage in the presidential election campaign in the event he decides to run on his own, without the support of coalition allies.

But President Kuchma may sack both Prime Minister Yanukovych and his Cabinet any time he likes, without consulting anyone on such a step. In other words, Mr. Kuchma still remains the crucial political figure in the country, which determines the rules of the game, despite an apparent glitch in his constitutional-reform efforts.

Earlier this year, Mr. Yanukovych reportedly asked Mr. Kuchma to replace several oblast chairmen. This is quite understandable - the prime minister wants to have his own people in the oblasts for the upcoming election campaign. Mr. Kuchma thus far has not reacted to Mr. Yanukovych's request. That may be an indicator that he has not yet decided whether Mr. Yanukovych is the right man for the presidential job.

At any rate, closely watching President Kuchma's behavior in the following month or two seems to be a more sensible and enlightening task than reading a plethora of speculations, assumptions and rumors carried by the Ukrainian press in connection with political reform and the upcoming presidential ballot. For the time being, nobody seems to know anything for sure in Ukraine, Mr. Kuchma included.

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

| Home Page |