• Українська
  • Русский
  • English
Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

OPINION

13 July, 1999 - 00:00

Wrong Man in the Wrong Place

This country has lived five years with the wrong President

I'm no President, I am a rocket-maker

Words ascribed to Leonid Kuchma

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

 

Rubric: