ROUGH DRAFT: Yanukovych gets egged (10/03/04)

ROUGH DRAFT

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

Yanukovych gets egged

Viktor Yushchenko has crisscrossed Ukraine relentlessly in his pursuit of the presidency, nearly getting fatally poisoned, or even murdered, in the process. He has spent limited finances to buy advertising time on all the major television channels, only to see his campaign message sandwiched between ads presenting the bizarre platforms of a radical pro-Russian and an extreme right candidate.

In turn, the fringe candidates - and there is a lot of fringe in Ukraine with 24 presidential hopefuls registered for the balloting - have used whatever resources and television time they have obtained to make outlandish statements to grab the attention of voters and affect the October 31 outcome.

Then we have Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, currently second in national polls behind Mr. Yushchenko in the race for the Ukrainian presidency, who until recently has sat in his seventh floor office atop the Cabinet of Ministers building, literally and symbolically above the fray. He has maintained that he cannot waste his time with the pettiness of campaigning, for he has had to continue working for the nation. He has explained that this was the best way to show the electorate what it could expect from a Yanukovych presidency.

Perhaps the strategy was a sincere effort to show responsibility on his part in order to develop voters' trust and a rapport with the straight-shooting, hard-working Ukrainian laborer and farmer, who comprise a large majority of the Ukrainian electorate. Perhaps there was a simpler premise: a strong Ukrainian economy, if not tampered with, could be enough to get Mr. Yanukovych elected.

The strategy seems to have suddenly changed, however, and the new tactics may have left Mr. Yanukovych with a larger electability problem than before. After the poisoning of Mr. Yushchenko and a bump in the election ratings in favor of the leader of the Our Ukraine coalition, the campaign team of the Ukrainian prime minister, in an about face, decided to have him embark on a weeklong campaign tour across, first, the westernmost regions, followed by the easternmost regions.

At a campaign stop in Ivano-Frankivsk, where Mr. Yushchenko remains the overwhelming favorite, Mr. Yanukovych was hit with a chicken egg as he disembarked from a bus. While his supporters allege that he also received a second blow from another "hard object," that object has not been identified, nor has the second hit been documented visually. A student of Stefanyk Prykarpattia University allegedly tossed the fragile, oblong object and has admitted as much. In an incident that some might say should be published in "Ripley's Believe It or Not," the egging left the Ukrainian prime minister hospitalized for three days and signaled the end of this campaign tour.

Film footage of the incident as shown on the pro-Yushchenko television station, Channel 5, has not conclusively proved what, other than a single egg, hit the Ukrainian prime minister. His reaction, however, was quite clear: first he received the hit; then he looked down, noticed the yellow splatter on his suit coat and fell backwards to the ground.

Mr. Yanukovych may well have been the victim of an act of retribution by a young student angered by the poisoning of his preferred presidential candidate, but it may also be that earlier in his life Mr. Yanukovych had studied Stanislavsky's "method acting" techniques and was finally able to put them to good use in trying to show the Ukrainian public that he, too, was a victim, although the public soon let him know they weren't certain ofwhat he was a victim.

After retreating to Kyiv, the presidential hopeful undoubtedly read the results of the latest surveys, which showed that 72 percent of the Ukrainian electorate believed that the egg scandal in Ivano-Frankivsk had been a political campaign ruse perpetrated by the Yanukovych campaign team.

National Deputy Mykola Tomenko, who is an official in the campaign of Viktor Yushchenko, went further, saying the events of that day had all the designs of a new, harsher strategy designed by Russian public relations experts, who have replaced the campaign team headed by Serhii Tyhypko. Mr. Tomenko said that Mr. Tyhypko is now Mr. Yanukovych's chief election tactician in name only - this, after he couldn't close the popularity gap between his own candidate and Mr. Yushchenko.

Many political pundits within Ukraine believe that Mr. Yanukovych's initial campaign strategy remains, however, although the tactics may become more crude and overt as election day nears. They suggest that the goal remains to position Mr. Yanukovych as the only truly experienced, pragmatic and level-headed candidate within a pack of extremists, opportunists and power hungry types.

Although a plodding hulk of a man, Mr. Yanukovych is handsome and ever immaculately groomed and well-tailored. In short he is telegenic. Therefore, exposure over the television airwaves - which his supporters and cronies control almost exclusively - is a smart strategy, all the more so because he is far from a charismatic or articulate speaker, which is good reason to avoid the campaign stump or a debate with the much more intellectually stimulating Mr. Yushchenko.

In short, the strategy utilized by Mr. Yanukovych's campaign team is to present Mr. Yanukovych as a man of action, a hard-working and diligent civil servant sensitive to the needs of the Ukrainian people. In turn, they want to paint Mr. Yushchenko as shrill, power hungry and concerned only for the well-being of a narrow element within society.

Not coincidentally, Mr. Yushchenko's television ads run in a bloc on the major channels, between an ad by Slavianska Party presidential candidate Oleksander Bazyliuk, a staunch Russophile, and Roman Kozak of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in Ukraine Party (not associated with the OUN-B or OUN-M), whose campaign ad criticizes Mr. Yushchenko for having an American spouse who refuses to take Ukrainian citizenship. The ads flow seamlessly, making it difficult to initially understand where one ends and another begins. They leave the viewer with the firm impression that these candidates are parts of a general whole.

The political pundits also have not ignored evidence that some within the Yanukovych campaign team may want to cast a shadow of doubt over the legitimacy and believability of sociological polling in general and exit polling in particular, in order to retain the ability to manipulate the general perception within society as to who truly leads in the run-up to the presidential poll and even who turns out to be the eventual victor.

Before he was sidelined, Mr. Tyhypko said that sociological polling was biased and not trustworthy in general. He specifically held out that an extensive exit poll being developed for election day in Ukraine and funded by Germany, the European Union and the United States could not be trusted.

He used the Venezuelan popular referendum on the future of its president, Hugo Chavez, as a good example of how an exit poll could be manipulated. Mr. Tyhypko developed his argument disingenuously. He failed to take into account the countless other exit polls done in Europe, the United States and Canada, which have accurately forecast the outcome of elections prior to the publication of the final vote counts.

Mr. Tyhypko also failed to address another troubling aspect of the current presidential race in Ukraine. He did not feel sufficiently concerned to question the lack of a level playing field in the distribution of political ads on billboards throughout the country, even as European NGOs have questioned why Mr. Yushchenko and the other candidates have had little access to them. But then, why should - nine out of 10 of them belong to his candidate.

The Yanukovych campaign strategy is far from rock solid. It is based on a belief that the image of Mr. Yushchenko within the country can still be manipulated. It is also based on a conscious decision to portray Mr. Yanukovych as an old-school Soviet-style administrator, hard-working, unemotional and loyal to the cause, who also embraces newfound democratic values; in short, to offer him as pleasing to the widest spectrum of the Ukrainian electorate, if only in small portions.

It is far from a risk-free strategy and could well backfire, especially if the efforts to paint Mr. Yushchenko as out of the mainstream and to make his work and his life difficult, transform his image into that of a victim of a brutal regime. That could make him even more appealing to a Ukrainian electorate that can relate to a long-suffering individual, inasmuch as that is how many perceive themselves.

Likewise, Yanukovych strategists now must be concerned that a tactic aimed at putting a little egg on the prime minister's suit to portray him, too, as a victim of the turbulent presidential campaign process under way in Ukraine may have ended up on his face.

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