By Dmytro BAZIV
LEONID KUCHMA AND PETRO SYMONENKO: IDEOLOGICAL TWINS
"The majority of Communists are most likely to cast their votes for
Leonid Kuchma."
The closer the October presidential election approaches, the more persistent
will be the attempts of "independent" analysts, experts, and journalists
to convince the downbeat Ukrainian electorate that, given complete confusion
and vacillations among democrats, the only candidate able to stem the tide
of Communist revenge is Leonid Kuchma. No doubt, this will be supplemented
with a stream of similar statements and appeals from cultural figures,
veterans, and athletes. Unfortunately, few will think over who in fact
did most to bring about all the conditions for the danger of this Communist
revenge.
Taking into account the extraordinarily short memory of our people,
let me remind readers of some subtleties of the 1994 presidential elections,
as well as briefly analyze the degree of our most respected President's
much-advertised devotion to reform, patriotism, and democracy.
It is surprising that some of our democrats should have forgotten so
fast whom Mr. Kuchma has to thank for becoming President on July 10, 1994.
In July 1994, regional organizations of the Communist Party of Ukraine
(KPU) and rank-and-file Communists unfolded breathtakingly extensive canvassing
for Mr. Kuchma. And while the KPU's central publication, Komunist,
tried to look restrained, regional Communist hardly bothered. For example,
Leninskaya pravda, No. 13, the Sumy oblast KPU newspaper, came out
one day before he elections with a front-page explanatory instruction for
the most dull-witted, "Why I will vote for Leonid Kuchma." In my native
Sevastopol, Communist canvassers managed to mobilize on July 10, 1994,
all local war veterans and disabled, who obediently went to the polls to
vote for Mr. Kuchma, carrying identical slips of paper with the name, Kuchma,
on it (perhaps to prevent confusion). And they ensured a 91.98% pro-Kuchma
vote in the city. Now the Communists prefer not to remember all this, and
sometimes they even deny their open support of Mr. Kuchma in the 1994 elections.
However, suffice it to take any regional KPU newspaper of July 1994 to
be convinced of the contrary. Let us open, for example, Kommunist Krivbassa,
No. 3 of July 19, 1994: "The Communists are known to have supported L.Kuchma's
candidacy." No comment.
Those who remember well early July 1994 will hardly dare deny that on
July 10, 1994, all 120,000 KPU members unanimously voted for Mr. Kuchma.
Immediately after the 1994 presidential elections Petro Symonenko was
literally radiating optimism: "incidentally, the newly-elected President
has an attentive and constructive attitude to our positions" (see Komunist,
No. 20, 1994). It was a family idyll. And that the partners later developed
some differences is no wonder.
When you speak to ordinary Communists, they admit voting for Mr. Kuchma
(some of them even in the first round), but they complain that he has cheated
them. I calm them by explaining that while the Communists thought that
Mr. Kuchma's win was their tactical victory, it was in fact a strategic
victory, and Mr. Symonenko has not done over the past five years even a
third of what Mr. Kuchma has for the KPU's increased popularity. In a word,
they settled accounts. But the main thing is that they again, five years
later, need each other like the air the breath. For Mr. Symonenko is a
far more convenient adversary for Mr. Kuchma in the second round than other
contenders. And the only candidate against whom Mr. Symonenko has even
a theoretical chance to gain over 50% of the votes in the second round
is Mr. Kuchma.
Perhaps Mr. Symonenko needs Mr. Kuchma as a second-round rival even
more than Mr. Kuchma needs Mr. Symonenko. The point is that if both of
them qualify for the second round, it will lead to a disastrously low turnout,
for these two candidates symbolize all things negative in Ukrainian society.
The Kuchma/Symonenko standoff in the second round will dissuade a considerable
part of non-communist electorate, demoralized by this results of the first
round, from turning up in strength, and in these conditions a maximum possible
25-40% vote for Symonenko with a normal turnout of 70-75% can automatically
become a 50-55% vote with a turnout of 40-50%. So if the first round produces
the desired Kuchma/Symonenko pair, Mr. Kuchma's main task is to organize
high activity of voters in the second round, in which case the share of
the chronically active leftist electorate will go down.
However, Mr. Kuchma has another option. If Mr. Symonenko suddenly spurns
the elections and KPU puts forward Mr. Tkachenko or Mr. Moroz as its candidate
(which is hardly likely), the pattern of a standoff between the democrat
(Kuchma) and a Communist avenger breaks down. To save the time-tested pattern,
Symonenko is being simply replaced by Progressive Socialist (PSPU) leader
Natalia Vitrenko. The latter is even more convenient as a rival in the
second round. The point here is not even in the PSPU leader's personality,
but, rather, our society's lack of psychological readiness to cast a majority
vote for a woman president, not even Margaret Thatcher. Hence any male
is sure to overtake any female in the second round of the Ukrainian presidential
race.
This why it is not only Mr. Kuchma who is interested in further hyping
of Ms. Vitrenko. Ms. Vitrenko's increased popularity should not so much
shock the Communists either, for, as a result of the five years of (in)activity
by their 1994 election ally (Kuchma), the electoral base of the extreme
Left has expanded so much that all pie-in-the-sky candidates will have
enough votes of impoverished people who refuse (or maybe never knew how)
in their despair to think soberly.
Now a few words about the incumbent President's patriotism, commitment
to democracy and reform, for references to exactly these criteria allow
the architects of his pre-election image to present Mr. Kuchma as the only
alternative to "undemocratic, anti-reform, and anti-state forces." We have
to shatter this ideologeme, so persistently imposed on the electorate.
Consider a few examples of his commitment to democracy. At first, he
systematically flouted the principles of local self-government. Then he
publicly threatened Supreme Court Chairman Boiko and stated that the Cabinet
member and Minister of Finance Mitiukov "will not get poorer if he pays
from his own pocket" several tens of thousands of hryvnias. All this shows
the President lacks elementary political culture, an integral part of democracy.
And what impact did our President's company with communist leaders Jiang
Zemin and Fidel Castro in the enemies of the press list have on Ukraine's
international image? The list of his democratic virtues could be extended
further.
So much for Kuchma the democrat. Now take Kuchma the patriot. Shortly
before the 1994 elections Mr. Kuchma said exactly as follows: "Ukrainian
statehood cannot be for us an end in itself" (Komunist, No. 18,
1994). Mr. Kuchma may be said to have been upholding this principle for
all five years of his presidency, when the citizens' mistrust and hatred
toward their state reached dizzying heights. According to the polls, every
third Ukrainian dreams of leaving Ukraine for good. The last five years
of Ukraine's foreign political life can be characterized as absolutely
failure: foreign trade fell, the Council of Europe is on the point of kicking
us out, even Ukraine's associate membership in the European Union has not
become more feasible, and our sluggish partnership with NATO is in jeopardy.
Conversely, the ratification of Black Sea accords and joining the Inter-Parliamentary
Assembly (both things approved by the President) testifies to Ukraine being
again drawn into the Russian orbit. In principle, this is quite natural,
for, in the absence of any positive economic and political progress at
home, the efforts of our diplomats to grasp at Europe are doomed to failure,
even if the role of prime-mover is played by such professionals as Borys
Tarasiuk.
Mr. Kuchma's reformism as premier and President can be best illustrated
by the lack of investments along with the chronic decline of GDP and living
standards. What is really on the rise in this country are taxes and the
scale of the shadow economy. Ukraine is slipping toward the Bulgarian scenario
even without a leftist government. And here is the assessment of the President's
latest reformatory zeal by Viktor Pynzenyk: "The President exercises his
right to issue decrees on legally unregulated economic matters in order
to stifle, not carry out, reforms."
So what do we have as a result? Our President turns out to be neither
a patriot nor a reformer, nor, of all things, a democrat. In that case,
what kind of an alternative, pardon the word, does he present? An alternative
to what?
After the 1994 elections, addressing a KPU Central Committee plenum,
Mr. Symonenko called the 13% of votes collected by the joint KPU and Socialist
Party (SPU) candidate Oleksandr Moroz as almost a leftist victory.
At the moment of Mr. Kuchma's inauguration, 13% was really a ceiling
for the Left. In four years of his presidency of a peudo-democrat and pseudo-reformer,
the KPU and SPU now gather over 30% (add to this the votes for PSPU, Trudova
Ukrayina and other "defenders of the Motherland"). The KPU parliamentary
faction has increased by one and a half times.
And after this some Soskin-type retired "patriots" put forward to Ukraine
Kuchma as the best remedy against communism for the next five years! Under
this "treatment" our independence will end with joining the Union of World
Outcasts immediately after the 2002 parliamentary elections, when the Communists
will take about 300-350 seats in our parliament.
One cannot respect oneself to portray Mr. Kuchma as a democrat and Ukrainian
patriot, a person who won a victory in 1994 largely due to the feverish
support of regional Communist organizations, a person on whom Russian reactionaries
pinned hopes of destroying Ukrainian statehood (read the Russian press
for June-July 1994), and who created a situation after five years of his
presidency when the main question to be answered by the elections is, unfortunately,
not at all the one usually asked during elections in other countries, what
kind of country we will be, but the altogether morbid question of whether
there will be a country at all. And it is thanks to Mr. Kuchma and the
policy he has pursued that this in fact senseless question is still on
the political agenda. It is also he who is to blame mainly for the fact
that such words as democracy and reforms cause make the man in the street
nauseous and make him associate them with today's shameful situation in
the country. The President is also responsible for the qualitative composition
of Verkhovna Rada because its present composition is the inevitable reaction
of the people to the policies of the executive authorities formed by the
President.
Thus one of the challenges faced by non-Communist candidates, whose
electorate overlaps to a large extent with Mr. Kuchma's potential electorate,
is the need not only to effectively break down the formula imposed by the
President's Moscow-based image-makers of democrat Kuchma against a reactionary
Communist (Symonenko, Vitrenko), but also of graphically demonstrate direct
interconnection between Mr. Kuchma's performance as Premier and President
and the increased Communist influence in Ukraine. One should propose an
effective counter-ideologeme, that voting for Kuchma today is actually
voting for the Communists tomorrow, and make the broad strata of Ukrainian
society accept it in the shortest time possible.
On October 31, our people will be given a chance to correct their mistake,
but to do so, one must admit the existence of the mistake itself and also
understand that responsibility is being borne not only by the newly elected
President but also by the one who made a wrong choice (as well as those
who called for such a choice, i.e., the Communists). Most of our compatriots
persistently refuse to understand this and accept responsibility for what
is going on in this country. However, the awareness of this responsibility
is very important for a right choice in the future, for it is impossible
to learn a lesson without being aware of one's mistake.








