NEWS ANALYSIS: Officials target another oligarchic clan in Ukraine (05/22/05)

NEWS ANALYSIS: Officials target another oligarchic clan in Ukraine

by Taras Kuzio
Eurasia Daily Monitor

The May 13 arrest of the former oblast chairman of Zakarpattia, Ivan Rizak, follows the capture of the head of the Donetsk Oblast Council, Borys Kolesnykov, one month earlier. The widespread arrests of lower-ranking officials for election fraud and corruption have now moved up to medium-level officials.

Mr. Rizak is formally accused of driving the dean of the University of Uzhhorod to commit suicide in May 2004. Volodymyr Slyvka was found dead with his veins slashed and a knife in his heart. The charge could lead to 7-12 years' imprisonment.

Mr. Rizak also stands accused of massive corruption in Zakarpattia, including extorting protection money from local businesses for the Social Democratic Party - United (SDPU). Transport Minister Yevhen Chervonenko also revealed that during the April 2004 mayoral elections in the Zakarpattia town of Mukachiv, Mr. Rizak ordered Internal Affairs Ministry spetsnaz (special forces) to beat up Our Ukraine deputies and organized massive election fraud (Ukrayinska Pravda, May 15).

The next arrests will undoubtedly be senior figures in Mr. Rizak's SDPU and Mr. Kolesnykov's Party of the Regions. The arrest of Mr. Rizak hits the SDPU particularly hard, because the SDPU was the only one of Ukraine's three clans to not be popular in its home base. Instead of Kyiv, the SDPU put down roots in Zakarpattia, where it still faced challenges from more liberal groups.

Since the 2004 presidential election, regional officials in Zakarpattia have been replaced by those loyal to President Viktor Yushchenko, whose Our Ukraine is the most popular political force in the region. In the 2002 elections, Our Ukraine and the Yulia Tymoshenko bloc together won 41 percent of the Zakarpattia vote, and Mr. Yushchenko also won the 2004 presidential race in Zakarpattia. In contrast, Our Ukraine has made few inroads into the Donetsk Oblast, where the Donetsk clan and the Party of the Regions (PR) can remain secure.

Stripped of its home base, the SDPU is likely to follow the demise of the Dnipropetrovsk clan's Labor Ukraine. Labor Ukraine de facto disintegrated after the Orange Revolution as its leader, Serhii Tyhypko, was discredited for being the head of the Viktor Yanukovych campaign. Mr. Tyhypko went to Austria on a "skiing holiday" in late November and returned only four months later. To distance itself from Mr. Tyhypko, Labor Ukraine elected a new young leader, Valerii Konovaliuk, a defector from the Party of the Regions.

Ukraine's centrist parties are tainted with election fraud and massive corruption, making it impossible for the Yushchenko team to treat them as if they were a real opposition force. The efforts of the Party of the Regions and the SDPU to portray the arrests of Messrs. Kolesnykov and Rizak as "political repression" have fallen on deaf ears.

Verkhovna Rada Chairman Volodymyr Lytvyn does not regard either the Party of the Regions or the SDPU as "opposition." According to him, "In Ukraine, aside from the Communist Party, there is no opposition. Those who declare themselves to be in opposition are simply demoralized and they do not possess a clear position" (Ukrayinska Pravda, May 17). Former SDPU adviser Mykhailo Pohrebynskyi also believes that the SDPU "has no strategic plan of how to be in opposition" (Ukrayinska Pravda, March 24).

Besides these factors, the SDPU also suffers from four other problems that will contribute to its ultimate demise.

First, SDPU Chairman Medvedchuk is a liability, but his leadership is fundamental to the party's existence.

Second, Mr. Medvedchuk admitted to the SDPU congress that his experience heading the presidential administration from 2002 to 2004 damaged the party's popularity (sdpuo.org.ua, April 2). The SDPU obtained six percent of the vote in 2002, while today its popularity hovers around two percent. The party may not cross the three percent threshold for the 2006 parliamentary elections.

Third, the investigation into Mr. Yushchenko's poisoning is homing in on the SDPU. Mr. Medvedchuk and Volodymyr Satsiuk, deputy chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine in 2004, likely will be implicated in this criminal case. Mr. Yushchenko fell ill following a dinner at Mr. Satsiuk's house.

Fourth, details are slowly emerging about a conspiracy to cover up the murder of opposition journalist Heorhii Gongadze in fall 2000. Procurator General Sviatoslav Piskun has revealed that, after Mr. Gongadze was murdered, he was disinterred and re-buried by a second group (Ukrayina Moloda, May 5).

This second team placed Mr. Gongadze's body in a shallow grave, leaving items on him that could identify him. They also re-buried him in Socialist Party Chairman Oleksander Moroz's constituency north of Kyiv. The aim, Mr. Piskun said he believes, was to undermine the government, which at that time was led by Prime Minister Yushchenko. The Yushchenko government's crackdown on graft in the energy sector had particularly affected the SDPU, which therefore wanted to see his government go.

A detailed investigation in Ukrayina Moloda (April 14) adds to this theory, claiming that the SDPU moved the journalist's body in order to discredit President Leonid Kuchma and force early elections. This scenario suggests that the SDPU knew about the incriminating audiotapes made in Mr. Kuchma's office by presidential security guard Mykola Melnychenko.

According to Mr. Melnychenko, in the event of early elections, either Mr. Medvedchuk or Yevhen Marchuk, then secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, would have succeeded President Kuchma. Mr. Melnychenko told former Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, whose Civil Liberties Foundation financially assisted him in exile, that he had worked for Mr. Marchuk.

Dr. 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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