ANALYSIS: Why Yanukovych lost Round 1 and why he will lose in Round 2 (11/14/04)

ANALYSIS

Why Yanukovych lost Round 1 and why he will lose in Round 2

by Taras Kuzio
Eurasia Daily Monitor

Five days after the election, the final results were still not declared in Ukraine's presidential election. Nevertheless, as opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko declared: "Whatever the authorities might say to us," he won the first round. "And, in the second round we shall finalize this victory," he added (Ukrainska Pravda, November 4). Final results from exit polls showed Yushchenko in the lead over Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych by 6.8 percent in one poll, and by 0.9 percent in another.

Western governments and election-monitoring organizations have criticized the four-month-long election campaign, with its massive abuse of state administrative resources, biased media, voter intimidation and vote tabulation fraud. All of these factors worked in Mr. Yanukovych's favor, enabling him to increase his core support in his home region of Donetsk and among state officials from 20-25 percent to 40 percent.

Another source of support for Mr. Yanukovych came from Communist Party pensioners bribed by a doubling of pensions in early October. They were also attracted by his new policies in favor of dual citizenship and Russian as a second state language. A vicious smear campaign depicting Mr. Yushchenko as an American stooge also attracted some left-wing voters.

Having lost Round 1, there is little the Yanukovych camp can do to win the second round on November 21. They deployed a full range of electoral malpractices in the first round, but many of these attempts failed because of the mass mobilization of opposition supporters. It will be difficult to use the same tactics in Round 2. The opposition will be better prepared to prevent fraud and international observers will be more vigilant.

If additional votes cannot be obtained from voter fraud, what other tactics are possible? Bribing pensioners will be impossible as Ukraine's budget, hryvnia exchange rate and inflation rate are still reeling from the doubling of pensions last month. Playing the "Russian card," which Russian political advisors so hoped would bring Mr. Yanukovych a massive majority, also failed. Those voters already pro-Russia (i.e., Communist pensioners) have already switched to Mr. Yanukovych. The "Russian card" attracted few non-Communist voters for three reasons.

First, today's Ukraine is very different from 1994, when Leonid Kuchma successfully used the "Russian card" against incumbent Leonid Kravchuk. Despite massive attempts to portray 'Mr. Yushchenko in a Soviet-style campaign as a pro-American "nationalist," this failed to produce the same results as in 1994 when Mr. Kuchma labelled Mr. Kravchuk as a "nationalist."

Second, Russia's heavy-handed intervention - including President Vladimir Putin's ill-timed appearance at a military parade in Kyiv brought forward by a week - backfired, especially in Kyiv where Mr. Yushchenko won by a landslide. Interestingly, one day after the elections, Russian Security Council Secretary Igor Ivanov said Russia would be willing to work with either candidate. This was a clear signal that Russia is less than confident of a Yanukovych victory.

Third, the attempt to repeat Mr. Kuchma's 1994 success by making this year's race also a contest between "nationalists" and "Russophiles" failed. A decade later, the issues are different and Mr. Yushchenko does not come across as a "nationalist" to most Ukrainian voters.

Two reasons why this year's elections are different from 1994 are the results from central Ukraine and the role of the left. In 1994 Mr. Kuchma won more of central Ukraine than did Mr. Kravchuk. In this year's elections, Mr. Yushchenko swept central Ukraine and, according to exit polls, also won the Kherson Oblast in southern Ukrainian.

The left (Communist Petro Symonenko, Socialist Oleksander Moroz, and Progressive Socialist Natalia Vitrenko) received a combined vote of 13 percent. In the 1994 elections, Mr. Kuchma won all of the left vote in Round 1. In this year's elections only Ms. Vitrenko tried the nationalist argument (Ukrainska Pravda, November 3). Ms. Vitrenko's 1.5 percent support for Mr. Yanukovych will be offset by the 1 percent won by Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs head Anatolii Kinakh, which will now go to Mr. Yushchenko.

On November 4, 127 out of 130 delegates at a Communist Party Central Committee plenum voted to not back either of the two remaining candidates. If the Communists had backed Mr. Yanukovych they might have only discredited themselves ahead of the March 2006 parliamentary elections. Mr. Yanukovych had already bribed most Communist voters in Round 1, and there were only 5 percent left who could still defect in Round 2. This is now not the case, despite desperate attempts to court the left by Mr. Yanukovych.

The Communists were also perplexed because the Socialists bested them for the first time. The Socialists have always ruled out backing Mr. Yanukovych and do not recognize his claim to victory in the first round. The Socialists are in the midst of what are likely to be very fruitful negotiations with the Yushchenko camp. Their demands include Mr. Yushchenko's promise, if elected, to support constitutional reforms, halt the sale of land and support social welfare policies.

The second round will also be decided by defections from the pro-presidential camp. Here there are more similarities to the 1994 elections. One reason for Mr. Yanukovych's poor performance in Round 1 is the lack of full support given to him by some regional officials and members of political parties who are his allies on paper. In reality, many have sat on the fence, preferring to remain neutral. Many of them do not feel threatened by a Yushchenko victory.

The creeping defection of ruling elites from the Yanukovych camp could be seen in the collapse of the parliamentary majority in September. On election day, Mr. Yushchenko's ally Yulia Tymoshenko announced that agreement had already been reached by 233 deputies to create a new pro-Yushchenko majority.

Parliament Chairman and head of the Agrarian Party Volodymyr Lytvyn stated that he would be happy with either of the two leading candidates. Mr. Lytvyn's relations with the Yanukovych camp declined in September-October after he prevented them from adjourning Parliament until after the elections in a failed attempt to deprive the opposition of a public platform. Mr. Lytvyn was also instrumental in supporting the creation of a parliamentary committee to investigate election violations.

Other former members of the pro-presidential camp were personally insulted by their coarse treatment by Viktor Medvedchuk, head of the presidential administration. Former Kuchma adviser Oleksander Volkov, who was heavily involved in Mr. Kuchma's 1999 re-election campaign, began courting Mr. Yushchenko. Another was Yevhen Marchuk, who was angered after he learned from the media that he had been removed as defense minister. His first interview was then deliberately given to opposition Channel 5 which supports Mr. Yushchenko. Mr. Kinakh was also angered by the manner in which he was removed as prime minister to give the post to Mr. Yanukovych.

Outgoing President Kuchma will also play an important role. He is unlikely to support the extreme position advocated by Mr. Medvedchuk, namely to use all available means, including violence, to guarantee that Mr. Yushchenko is not elected. This extremism has little support among the Kuchma camp except for Mr. Medvedchuk, because he has no future in Ukraine if Mr. Yushchenko is elected president.

An alternative path devised by President Kuchma's son-in-law, Viktor Pinchuk, is for Mr. Kuchma to become an international statesman, which a violent end to his decade in office would not permit. Mr. Pinchuk has brought many American VIPs to Ukraine to meet Mr. Kuchma. One such visit by former President George H.W. Bush paid off when President Kuchma met President George W. Bush during the 2004 NATO summit in Istanbul. The former Foreign Affairs Ministry building close to the presidential administration has been renovated to be Kuchma's new international foundation, where Mr. Pinchuk envisages him following in former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's footsteps as an international statesman.

Taken together, these factors suggest that, short of Mr. Medvedchuk being allowed to use violence to prevent a Yushchenko victory in Round 2, the odds are heavily stacked against Mr. Yanukovych. The tide, therefore, is flowing toward a Yushchenko victory.

Taras Kuzio is visiting professor at the Elliot School of International Affairs, George Washington University. The article above, which originally appeared in The Jamestown Foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor, is reprinted here with permission from the foundation (www.jamestown.org).

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