NDP leader Anatoly Matviyenko published an open letter to the President
last Tuesday (after handing the letter to Mr. Kuchma the previous day).
In the first place, the message reminds the President of the party's statement
addressed to him and putting forth a number of requirements and posing
questions being of deep concern to it.
"Why does a large number of your edicts and specific decisions run counter
to the program you personally announced? This has actually resulted in
the destruction of entrepreneurship in Ukraine and further economic and
social decline.
"Why should a handful of oligarchs flourish on this economic ruin, getting
ever richer due to privileges received because of keeping close to those
in power, being free to take away from Ukraine all that money made illegally?
"How can one explain the delay of effective administrative reform?
"How can one explain that in the period since 1994 the opportunities
to exercise the freedom of expression have been considerably reduced in
Ukraine?
"Why can the Communists, who back in 1994 would not dare nominate a
single presidential candidate, have a number of such candidates now, including
Left extremists, while the Right wing is virtually destroyed?"
Unfortunately, the letter continues, "you did not respond to our
appeal." However, unlike most on the NDP Political Council, Mr. Matviyenko
takes a stand linking support for Leonid Kuchma's reelection campaign to
Ukraine's socioeconomic situation. Thus, "remembering you saying that you
will run for president only if and when the socioeconomic situation improves,
while adhering to a straightforward and fair policy, we think you ought
not to put forward your candidacy for another term.
"We realize that you are not the only one responsible for the situation
that has developed in Ukraine. At the same time we are aware also that
the elections will serve to manifest Ukrainian citizens' protest. For these
people your candidacy would be an embodiment of all the failures and setbacks
of the current regime; hence, it could become the main reason for electing
a Communist candidate. Moreover, should you gain a miraculous victory,
this would merely postpone the Red revanche to the next elections in an
even more reactionary form. If we are wrong, you have an opportunity to
prove it by attending our party congress."
Some are likely to describe this extraordinary gesture by the leader
of the party of power as a political suicide attempt. Others may just say
that the man is making waves. Still others will regard it as a gauntlet
thrown down to the President. In fact, it could be another attempt to get
the President involved in public politics, something the NDP leader and
his associates have been talking about so insistently, trying to single
him out of the clannish crowd with their nomenklatura-lobby decision-making.
It would be interesting to know how many of those passing judgment on Mr.
Matviyenko's move would have the courage to publicly invite the President
to take part in a discussion of why a weak President should even want another
term. Perhaps Mr. Kuchma's invitation to the NDP faction and local party
organization leaders for a meeting was his way of responding to the open
letter. "I think that many are scared of this meeting," says Mr. Matviyenko,
"so this fear will determine its tone and decisions."
The open letter appeared after The Day's interview with the NDP
leader and before the recent NDP congress. However, the journalist's opening
question retains its relevance in view of the unprecedented events following
it:
The Day: It is no secret that this country is gripped by fear
and lives in uncertainty. The better a person is informed the clearer idea
he can get about the consequences of his actions. You have been close to
the top, perhaps closer than anyone else. You must know what those in high
office are capable of. Yet some of your party and its leadership decided
to make their requirements of the President public knowledge. Our newspaper
called this a courageous attempt to become a political party, but the consequences
turned out to be those of a slave revolt. Yet the nomenklatura failed again
to get you back into the Kuchma coterie. The nomenklatura approves of him
not so much because it expects any dividends as because it is afraid to
be made to step down and sink into oblivion - at best, as the Lazarenko
case shows, for other options are possible if worse comes to worst. So
when can one overcome one's fear? How? And where does this fear come from?
A. M.: As long as we fear the regime, it will ignore, hit, and
destroy us. And once we overcome this fear in ourselves, the regime will
assume an altogether different attitude. It will simply be a different
regime which understands that the main thing is to win our respect and
support. Unfortunately, servility is still predominant in us, above all
servility of the soul.
The Day: What about perestroika when those in power feared
the masses? How did we lose that?
A. M.: Remember the once popular Soviet movie, White Desert Sun?
A revolutionary soldier liberates a whole harem and the women tell him,
"Now that you have saved us we will be your wives." We turned out to be
unable to utilize of our freedom. A slave is supposed to use just his muscles;
he cannot be responsible for anything else. A freeman also has to use his
head, and his freedom is a great responsibility.
There is, however, a point past which you cannot decide anything else.
I can speak only for myself, but for me it was determined by my understanding
of honor, responsibility, duty, and dignity. If all this falls by the wayside,
feel ashamed of yourself. I think that I have traveled an adequately long
and thorny road. I sincerely wanted to help Kuchma. I hate to admit this
in public, but I have also suffered because I understood simultaneously
the necessity and hopelessness of this. The issue is not just Kuchma but
his shadow entourage that has a deathly fear of public politics. They declared
war on us because they perceived a threat. Matviyenko suggests an option,
but needs the President to make certain efforts in return. Those around
him who steal also offered him help, and the President understood where
his interests lay. I don't know what they are. If all this leads to prosecution
and infamy, as with Lazarenko, I would rather eat stale bread crusts all
my life.
The Day: In fact this began to look rather likely after presenting
your requirements for a presidential candidate.
A. M.: I wrote that statement - the one you call requirements
- not so much for the President as for all those saying, "Under no circumstances,
anybody but Kuchma." I could have then asked them, so who was right? The
President got rid of all those shadow operators, revised his policy, and
started making the right decisions. See, he even attended the party congress
and admitted that he had done a lot of dumb things. And then he said all
right, now that I know what must be done, let's save this country together.
As it is, the man just ignored our statement and ordered the party thrown
to the wolves. All the bloodhounds were let loose, the hunters loaded their
guns, each with telescopic sight. What was I supposed to do as party leader?
And again I don't mean myself in the first place. I was at a meeting in
Smila. One of the delegates, a woman schoolteacher, rose and said, "I was
on a train and I tried to put in a good word for Kuchma. They made me get
off at the next station. I will not canvass for him, I don't want to be
physically assaulted." And that's not all.
Once the statement appeared they started looking for something to incriminate
me, concentrating on Vinnytsia. People would be arrested there and kept
for a couple of days, pressed for evidence, bullied. The whole place was
in a turmoil. I came to Biloblotsky, head of the Presidential Administration,
and voiced my outrage. "How can you act that way? Why make innocent people
suffer?" We had a very unpleasant conversation.
After that I think Biloblotsky got in touch with the President, who
then spoke to the Premier. I am not sure but I think it was March 9 and
the President told the Premier something like, "Either you get that party
straightened out or you're fired."
The next day the Premier summoned all party members working for oblast
administrations, about 40 persons. At the time I knew nothing, but the
whole thing went according to Tolstoukhov's scenario. He "consulted" the
visitors and in the end the Premier was told, "Why ask us whether you should
stay on as Prime Minister or quit the party? You're Premier, you should
head our party and put an end to all the problems." The following day the
Political Committee held its well-known session, passing a resolution of
support for Kuchma.
The Day: Not so long ago you stated that you see no differences
between the entities headed by Viktor Pinchuk, Hryhory Surkis, and Oleksandr
Volkov acting in support of the President's, and those behind Pavlo Lazarenko.
A. M.: And why leave out Bakai? Our natural gas import policy
costs us two billion dollars every year. Germany, Hungary, and France receive
Russian gas for $40 at the most, but we have to pay around $80, well we
pay by allowing transit. Now suppose we pay $40 and get 50 million cubic
meters from Russia. Forty by fifty gives us two billion. If we had a President
who understood his country and what it means to owe $2.3 billion to pensioners
alone, he would ask himself why do we have to lose $2 billion just on gas
transit?
The Day: And what would the answer be?
A. M.: I think that the $2 billion in good business fashion obviously
gets divided up fifty-fifty. It's all very convenient. Russia drags us
into a pit of debt: we lose any hope for our communications; they stop
being Ukrainian. And our state stops being a state. But then we get billions
in bank accounts; I don't know whose. And to me it makes no difference
- I'm not even interested who does the stealing and how the loot is divvied
up. But I can't understand how all this can be if we all love our nation
so much. And how much does it take to satisfy them? Is it already a gamble?
It's incomprehensible to me.
Second, Valery Pustovoitenko returned from Sumy and said, 'Well, we
collected 120 million hryvnias for electricity.' But less than ten million
came back in taxes. Strange. Well, where did 100 million go (this for two
months)? By now this money must have been converted and ended up in bank
vaults somewhere in the Bahamas, British Virgin Islands, etc. Out of eight
regional electric companies controlling interests in three are held by
structures under the influence of Surkis and Medvedchuk. Then Pustovoitenko
comes in and asks how could this be, "things must be put in order."
The Day: And, of course, there was no time to do so while
the investigators were spending four months to dig up dirt on you in Vinnytsia.
A. M.: Instead of our sitting down and discussing how the President
could correct the situation in this country. They couldn't understand that
I was stupid enough not to have stolen anything.
The Day: It's hard to blame them, since they know what is
going on in the country around all those feeding troughs.
A. M.: I agreed to the governor's post for purely political reasons.
I had to give it a try to see if I could do it or not. And they know the
general scheme of things: give somebody a post, provoke him, create an
atmosphere where he can do anything without fear of punishment, and then
they call him up and say, "Your fate is in our hands." It's like underworld
practice. What did Pavlo Lazarenko do? He raised professional corruption
to the very top, to a point where there is no restraint whatsoever. It
became the rule.
The Day: There was no one higher than Lazarenko except the
President.
A. M.: At the second party congress, when we were about to pass
a vote of no confidence in Lazarenko and demand that the President dismiss
him, precisely 15 minutes before the vote Kushnariov gave me the President's
instructions: stop the attack on Lazarenko. We disobeyed. Now it is already
clear that Lazarenko alone was not the point. He is gone, but nothing has
changed. And I think that Valery Pustovoitenko knows this as well as anyone
else. Well, what can he do? Under the President's edict all military and
security ministries and agencies were withdrawn from his jurisdiction.
What can he do, say, to bring Surkis and his oblast energy companies to
account? All he can do is contact those ministries and agencies and say
look, people, something is wrong there. Put things in order. And they'll
say, "We need an order." There will be no order because today the United
Social Democrats are the President's party.
The Day: Were the Kyiv elections additional evidence?
A. M.: Now that was somebody's classy intrigue. I don't know
whether the President or any of his associates is behind it. I think that
Presidential Administration's intrigue is meant to set two candidates on
one another and watch from the sidelines. A confrontation takes place but
the Administration remains on good terms with both. I think this is a betrayal
of both, and I think it will lead to more betrayal in response.
The Day: There are signs that Surkis is being led into a trap.
Why?
A. M.: Yes, deliberately. These rapacious appetites reach the
point that soon it is hard to curb them, then a good opportunity is found
to show someone his place. Great from the standpoint of technique, but
from the standpoint of morality?
The Day: With the free for all we have now, what kind of morals
do we have, and do any of the players even know the word? And if the President
intends to play by their rules during the campaign, why should he want
to weaken them?
A. M.: Because otherwise they will become dangerous and turn
on their teacher. I think Kuchma suspects that they have a foot in both
camps. They have reasons to feel scared and need to survive come what may.
It's elementary political survival.
When on Victory Day the President spoke about the Soviet Communist Party's
role in the last war, citing the textbook example, "If I get killed in
battle please consider me a Communist," I remembered an old joke about
a Jew writing this his own way, "If I get killed please consider me a Communist,
but if I don't please don't." The same may happen during the elections.
Leonid Kuchma has a lot of supporters, including part of the NDP. Here
they follow exactly that Jewish soldier's logic: Mr. Kuchma, if you win
consider me one of your men; if you don't, then don't."
The Day: What should be done to try to get fragments of other
parties on the Right united?
A. M.: The process of creating political unity must not be reduced
to collecting scraps and trying to put something together. I think that
the other democratic forces must just stand looking on at what is happening
inside our party. They must meet us halfway, so we can agree on a joint
candidate. I know that Yevhen Marchuk could be the winner if he were the
only agreed-on candidate. And Hennady Udovenko is not much weaker than
the current President in this sense. But I think that one must join the
unification process with not only - or maybe not so much - the next campaign
in mind, but also national strategy. In that case the problem of getting
oneself elected will not be uppermost, something preventing the Right opposition
from combining efforts.







