ROUGH DRAFT: Campaign in Ukraine turns scary (10/31/04)

ROUGH DRAFT

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

Campaign in Ukraine turns scary

Let's hope that when we look back on the presidential race of 2004 we'll all have a good laugh. Perhaps when recalling these dark days from the vantage point of the past we'll think of a horror movie, you know, the one in which the seemingly lifeless body of the slain monster, suddenly, momentarily lurches as if back to life - to scare the bejeezus out of the protagonist and the viewer as well - before falling back and finally dying.

Because, with the events of the last weeks before the October 31 presidential vote, Ukraine has become a scary place, one might say a police state, no different and perhaps worse than the one that ruled here for the 74 years prior to August 24, 1991.

Since that landmark date, the country had slowly moved away from its tortured past, albeit with thrusts and jerks, and some backsliding. Democratic institutions had taken root, civic organizations developed in all areas of the country, government processes became somewhat more transparent, and a free market economy began to expand robustly.

But in the last few weeks Ukraine's flag of democracy has been tossed into a storage bin as totalitarian tactics have become the norm in an effort by state authorities to force society to choose Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. Random searches, night-time arrests of students, surveillance of vehicles entering and exiting Kyiv, the brutish beating of supporters of Viktor Yushchenko, who can be compared to dissidents of the Soviet era, as well as the presidential candidate's earlier brush with death has led to a heightened state of fear within society.

Ukraine's law enforcement and intelligence services learned their Soviet tricks astonishingly well and - alarmingly - have not forgotten how to use them.

Just as the Soviet Union strove, with much success, to install fear in its citizens to maintain order and control, so has the government of Prime Minister Yanukovych succeeded, but in a rather different way. Mr. Yanukovych's aim has been to build fear within society for the candidacy of his opponent, to paint Mr. Yushchenko as a person with extremist ideas, who could lead the country to civil war.

After the recent bomb plants at the headquarters of the student organization Pora, and the bloody beating and knifing of Yushchenko supporters outside the CEC offices by hired goons, mothers in Kyiv are telling their teenagers and college-aged offspring not to go downtown. Pensioners are saying that American-led agents are destroying the Ukrainian peace after they earlier destroyed the Ukrainian economy.

However, whereas Soviet-era Moscow more often utilized tactics subtly to give the appearance in the West of moderation and a concern for international norms, the campaign team of Mr. Yanukovych has abandoned all sense of nuance in its acts of aggression. Today, appearances are not a matter of concern for official Kyiv - victory in the presidential election is. It is a desperate race to the finish, perhaps because the prime minister understands that he is facing defeat, as some political experts are stating privately.

Nonetheless, state authorities have nothing to lose, and continued power and affluence to gain, in fighting this immoral and unprincipled campaign battle. One diplomat in Ukraine's foreign service, when asked why he thought the Yanukovych candidacy would prevail, said that for the political establishment defeat is not a consideration, it is akin to death because its members, the ruling oligarchs, would lose everything - power, status, and wealth - inasmuch as all was gotten through control of the levers of the state.

That is why it has become a daily problem for Mr. Yushchenko to find a place to land his campaign plane as has finding a local square at which to hold a rally. That is why the resources of the major mass media outlets are being utilized persistently, shamelessly, often absurdly, to beat into the population that Mr. Yuschenko's illness, paralysis and near death were the result of a drinking and eating binge.

Mr. Yushchenko has been forced to keep his stumping plans secret to the last minute so as not to have the resources of local and regional governments directed to upset his appearances. Even so, tens of thousands of his supporters have somehow found ways to show up on short notice, and with shifting venues, to express their support - even in the eastern oblasts of what is considered Yanukovych country.

The overt, cynical and shameless way in which the Yanukovych campaign has rolled over the Ukrainian landscape is shocking if only because the leadership, including the presidential candidate, must understand at some level that should the political strategies being employed by the prime minister's handlers succeed and he is elected president, it would have to live with the ramifications of its victory. The United States and the European Union have said that if the presidential elections in Ukraine prove to be unfair or not free, Ukraine could suffer economic and political sanctions.

However, if Mr. Yanukovych, in all of his post-Soviet enlightened wisdom, believes that Ukraine needs only its old Soviet comrades - Russia, Belarus and Kazakstan in a Eurasian common market - for it to prosper, then arrivederci, au revoir and bye-bye ...

Interestingly, Vasyl Baziv, first deputy chief of staff to outgoing President Leonid Kuchma, when asked about the mudslinging, the searches and dramatic declarations done in the heat of the election season, replied that no one should remain too concerned, for it all would soon end and normalcy would return. Perhaps.

He also said that after a short while everybody would forget how tortured the battle was. Interesting. Did Mr. Baziv inadvertently let slip what the political establishment in Ukraine was counting on should its candidate win? Do they cynically believe that international political memory is short, and that once the flag of democracy was taken out of the storage bin and again held aloft, old acquaintances would be renewed?

Better that Ukraine does not to have to confront such a situation. Better that after the final vote is counted Ukrainians will be able to look back at the 2004 campaign season and liken it to a horror movie, admittedly a very scary one, but one that was now over.

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