Ukraine’s first party of bureaucrats could not keep power
Meanwhile, the rules of the game played by the President’s team are such that consistently pragmatic business groups are on the winning side. The President does not need people he has to constantly look after. Instead, he needs those capable of supporting him.
On the other hand, the NDP has no ideology; it vacillates to keep to the “general line.” For example, when the President made a turnabout to support the national idea, so did the NDP and it will follow any other bend in the President’s road. It is trying to work out a new ideology and strategy, to build a new image. I don’t think the NDP has much chance; it is faced with a very serious problem as it has bred a lot of people capable of taking an independent stand. NDP is doomed to drift with the current.
It all began so well. There were two small parties: the Labor Congress (LC) and the Party of Democratic Rebirth (PDR). Few knew what they were all about. Each party had a couple of seats in Parliament; both had their people in the Cabinet, albeit in minor posts. Eventually, both parties set up a new organization which suddenly became the party of power with its faction in Parliament and a large lobby in the Cabinet and Presidential Administration. Most importantly, it was influential in a number of regions.
In 1996, part of the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) elite (people that declared support of Leonid Kuchma before the 1994 elections) sided with part of the former Communist Party’s Democratic Platform movement. This alliance seemed to be being discussed from below, with a lot of lower-level party debate concerning the methods of uniting, although it all boiled down to backing the President’s course and promoting use of the Ukrainian language. The convention, however, showed a dozen Ukrainian political stars in the presidium (which caught the ordinary LC-PDR delegates completely unawares), seemingly promising the LC-PDR alliance a great future. The party as such was created from above, although the show of mass initiative was well staged.
The NDP was initiated by several groups, primarily the one in Kharkiv (sometimes referred to as the Kharkiv Clan), headed by the then mayor and leader of New Ukraine, Yevhen Kushnariov. There was also the Lviv group, representing the political association New Wave ( Nova Khvylia ) with its acclaimed leader Taras Stetskiv. The alliance was joined by people from a party known as the Union for Support of the Crimean Republic, led by Serhiy Kunitsyn, then in charge of the Krasnoperekopsk District and Syvash Free Economic Zone. Dnipropetrovsk was represented by the Suzirya association and personally by Valery Pustovoitenko. Simultaneously, the party was joined by Presidential advisers Razumkov and Halchynsky, and SPF head Yuri Yekhanurov. Ivan Pliushch made a sudden move applying for membership, followed by others. All the groups joining the NDP had no common business interests, each having its business niche, and none would ever establish any kind of effective cooperation. The convention was not attended by bankers or managers of large enterprises. The party started functioning as one of nomenklatura, having good parliamentary and government lobbies.
The NDP’s development as a national structure was also started from above. First, the regional leadership was carefully put together from among former Party members who often would not even be members of a regional elite. In Kyiv, the NDP people were just gaining strength, being on far approach to Cabinet posts. It was then, however, that the NDP began to be frequently referred to as the party of power, although it actually nestled by the powers that be in 1996-97, with a varying degree of influence in certain regions and the capital. Striving to become truly influential, the NDP made the strategic mistake of not buying or setting up a single central Ukrainian media outlet, relying exclusively on the government-run radio and television channels. Hence the immediate publicity setback compared to its rivals. With its power of party aura the NDP had to measure up, assuming responsibility for whatever those in high office did. This was more than its rivals could have asked for, also eager to get power while showing no desire to openly play the first fiddle, not just then, let alone assume responsibility for the what went on upstairs. True, NDP also declared that it was not prepared to claim responsibility, considering the absence of a parliamentary majority. Yet it did have its people in high places: Premier, Deputy Premier, head of the Presidential Administration, and Presidential Representative in Parliament. The People’s Democrats found themselves in a situation where they had to be responsible for someone else’s wrongdoing. And the party had turned into a purely bureaucratic entity, as practically every regional office/cell was now headed by one of the deputies to the head of the local state administration, who knew only too well that his seat would be his for as long as his party people held their posts at the top.
The parliamentary elections exposed the weakness of the NDP’s bureaucratic machine. The party barely made it over the 4% barrier, with only Yekhanurov and Kinakh getting seats from majority constituencies. Once again, the NDP faction in Parliament was created from above, as over fifty lawmakers from majority electorates joined it. Afterward the NDP failed to back its candidate Speaker (Bandurka lost by a mere 4-vote margin, due precisely to those NDP People’s Deputies who failed to attend the session that day). After that began the exodus, as Labor, Rebirth, Reforms & Order, and other NDP-affiliated lawmakers jumped ship.
The NDP’s 1999 split actually took place along the same lines that had put the party together back in 1996: Labor Congress, barring Anatoly Matviyenko, yet reinforced by the regional bureaucracy, was on one side of the barricade. The Party of Democratic Rebirth was on the other. Interestingly, the formal reason for the breakup was that party’s attitude toward the President, the desire to replace him. Last but not least, of course, was their desire to avoid responsibility for Ukraine’s economic situation.
Then there was the presidential campaign. The NDP set up its campaign headquarters, Zlahoda, which, without any significant funds, had to make do with manual labor, including billboards portraying princes and bearing legends authored by one Zlahoda leaders. Yes, Zlahoda did its job, but no one noticed. True, there were some conventions and meetings, lectures on how to campaign, but that also passed unnoticed and Zlahoda failed during the election; all it did was help, and it couldn’t do much there due to its limited capacities. Its “manual work” — greater as it was compared to certain other campaign headquarters — did not attract attention. Zlahoda, stillborn as a bureaucratic organization, discharged just one function: loyalty to the ruling bureaucracy.
The elections showed yet another crack: Nova Ukrayina (New Ukraine), which many described, “I say Nova Ukrayina and I mean NDP; I say NDP and I mean Nova Ukrayina,” with its leader Yevhen Kushnariov did not seem content to rest on the laurels of Zlahoda and NDP. Nova Ukrayina was airborne, headed for political orbit, albeit moving slowly, without unnecessary ado. It is still known as a People’s Democratic association, but its leader and, simultaneously, second-in-command in the NDP appear increasingly determined to conduct their own policy.
Valery Pustovoitenko’s resignation was the final blow to the People’s Democrats. They had practically lost influence in government (Yuri Yekhanurov being a member of the Yushchenko team, rather than an adherent of the NDP party policy). The NDP fraction in Verkhovna Rada had dwindled to 26 members, mostly those that had got their seats in Parliament by party lists, meaning that they are most concerned about their own interests far remote from those of the NDP, and their faction membership does not actually place any obligations while allowing them to be counted among the elite supporting the President. The NDP has of late been transformed into a niche offering comfortable accommodation to all those unwilling for one reason or another to side with the currently strong presidential factions and parties yet willing to retain their pro-Kuchma political image, settling their own business and other problems without playing any political games and without offering anything much in return.
The NDP is still a force to be reckoned with; its 26 votes in Verkhovna Rada are badly needed by the parliamentary majority. The Speaker, an NDP member elected largely due to the fact that his holding the post would be the best possible middle course steered under the circumstances, is another trump in the NDP hand. Yet the party’s prospects look ultimately bleak. True, the NDP will have its people as second-in-command within regional executive bodies, but having lost their stronghold in Kyiv, the party is sure to lose the regions as well. Fighting comrades-in-arms would be a losing game, for want of strength and media support. The bureaucracy, being this party’s core, has started assimilating with all those other bureaucrats nestling close to the top. In a word, Ukraine’s first political party made up of bureaucrats never won power, for bureaucracy is just an attribute of power, its basis, but by no means a substitute for it.
