Bankova Prepares Understudy

Yet another section of the election campaign situation in Ukraine, produced at a roundtable for sociologists of the Academy of Sciences Institute of Sociology, has failed to impress anybody with new trends or figures. The attempts to project changes in the Kaniv Four strategy on the electoral behavior on October 31 ended up in old forecasts: President Kuchma's only rival is the »Ukrainian political sensation,» Natalia Vitrenko. This view was especially savored by pro-presidential TV channels in the evening news Saturday before the last, without even mentioning that the recent political event, carefully suppressed by the official media, could not possibly affect mass polls as yet.

Sociologist Oleksandr Vyshniak shocked his colleagues by saying that researches point at a probable victory of Natalia Vitrenko, in whose presence »Leonid Kuchma would lose, purely emotionally, in any discussion» (obviously, something Kuchma's image-makers should take to heart), and then president of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology Valery Khmelko, recalling, perhaps, the odd connection between the popularity of the Progressive Socialist and the amount of time spent on the air, requested media representatives to »do their best to prevent such candidates as Natalia Vitrenko from making it into the runoff.» In any case, one should probably expect another sharp increase in Vitrenko's popularity, which sociologists will again put down to the media's effect. And the higher will be the probability for Communist candidate Petro Symonenko to join the Kaniv Four, the more attractive an image of Natalia Vitrenko will be created for the electorate. For Kuchma, the PSPU leader is perhaps Symonenko's best understudy, should the elections follow the 1996 Russian scenario of somnambulant reformer vs. Red peril. And the voters will then be assigned the role of the raw material for campaign technologies.