OPINION

Five years ago Leonid Kuchma became Ukraine's second President. This writer, who has spent much time studying the Kuchma phenomenon from its inception, has always stressed that Mr. Kuchma's leadership in fact covers practically all this nation's recent history, and if he leaves office in October 1999 (I hope to God he will), it will be tantamount to the end of an era. In one way or another, Mr. Kuchma can mark a kind of jubilee worth noting. This piece does not attempt a profile, analysis, or summation. It is an attempt to focus on one aspect of the President's activities and formulate, so to speak, a sign or symbol of the outgoing epoch.

I first heard the name of Kuchma in the summer of 1992, when the question of Vitold Fokin's Cabinet resignation was first put on the agenda. He was named as a probable candidate to become Premier. The resignation was postponed to the fall, and Mr. Kuchma became Premier. It is perhaps difficult to find a more graphic example than this appointment to explain the political success of Mr. Kuchma. To reach a compromise, President Leonid Kravchuk suggested that all factions submit their proposals about candidates for Premier. New Ukraine, whose parliamentary faction included Mr. Kuchma (and the writer was a member of the presidium of this respected organization, which explains why he knows the details), took a vote in which the future President came in second. The results were shown to Mr. Kravchuk. It turned out that other factions had a similar picture: nowhere was Mr. Kuchma first, but he was the only candidate present on all lists. Mr. Kravchuk made a decision in a way typical of him - not to offend anyone - and Leonid Kuchma became Premier.

It is this surprising difference between what others think of Kuchma and what he really is that became the leitmotif of Mr. Kuchma's career. I remember very well our new Ukrainian lobbyists: their attempts to put Mr. Kuchma on the throne were permeated with the apparent confidence that they would be able to manipulate him. Where are they now? Some are already gone, so to speak; others are still to be found playing secondary roles in the President's entourage; yet others are already in the forefront of the anti-Kuchma opposition. Mr. Kuchma's entourage has kept changing, but the motive of this entourage has remained unchanged throughout the past eight years: an illusion that they can manipulate him. It went just like this: Mr. Kuchma has always been pushed forward by those who expected to use him, even at times perhaps against his own will. And he became President the same way - suddenly and without much desire: let us at least recall the televised ceremony of transferring power from Kravchuk to Kuchma. The latter President looked far more dispirited and at a loss than the former.

True, it would be a mistake to say that Mr. Kuchma is some sort of evil genius who deftly fools the naive intriguers around him and achieves his aims by means of subtle manipulation. I can suggest a quite paradoxical scheme that could explain the way the mechanism of our authorities works. Any intriguer (lobbyist, pressure group, trade union, parliamentary faction, or protesters in front of Verkhovna Rada) expects the object of its intrigues to do something that will lead to the intriguer's goal. The fatal feature of Mr. Kuchma, as an object, is that he makes tremendous efforts to do nothing. Under such circumstances, no successful intrigue is ever possible, and if you look seriously at things, it becomes clear that nobody has ever reached his goals with Mr. Kuchma in office. Mr. Kuchma himself is no exception: he failed to achieve his goals for the simple reason that he never had any (his long and exhausting struggle with Parliament was also caused by his desire to ensure a quiet existence), while he never regarded other people's goals as his own. But it could have been worse. If Mr. Kuchma had simply done nothing, a decision-making scheme would have arisen without him. But I reiterate: he makes tremendous efforts to make it possible to do nothing, that is, he has put all kinds of obstacles in the way of creating at least some rules and mechanisms, including the unwritten rules of court intrigue. Here lies, in my opinion, the main role of Mr. Kuchma in recent Ukrainian history. He did not create the existing system, he simply did nothing to substitute the rule of law for the law of ruling. As a result, the uninhibited and overgrown state has become all too impudent, subjugating and threatening to strangle this country.

By Volodymyr ZOLOTARIOV, The Day