Another five votes and Communist Petro Symonenko would have been elected, a close shave. We had it coming. That was the expression on most Deputies’ faces not on the Left after reading the vote return.
221 votes for Symonenko. Incidentally, Rukh Press Secretary Dmytro Panamarchuk, when interviewed by The Day, predicted the outcome very accurately. After the vote he analyzed and came up with this: among the Red votes 20-30 came from NDP, most likely from majority constituencies, and, of course, Hromada. Could it be that Mr. Lazarenko is trying to become Deputy Speaker this way?
Be it as it may, Hromada leaders were, true to their usual tactic of sitting on two chairs, trying to please the possible winner and stay on good terms with his opponents. Word spread that Comrade Symonenko met the President the previous night. The Day wrote that Hromada’s gold stock certificate could be rolled up and used in a very special way if NDP came to terms with the Communists. The National Security and Defense Council “recommended” that the President act in a sphere which is of considerable interest to Lazarenko & Co. Watching and waiting, Hromada leaders were mostly afraid to bark up the wrong tree. They did. They really messed up. Mr. Turchynov, the Hromada ideologue, when posed a direct question by The Day, started to dwell on “broadminded views” within the organization, although he did not deny that part of the faction could have voted for the Communist leader: “There is a point of view which everyone accepts: we must elect the Speaker, whether a hunchback or a cripple, if we want to preserve parliamentarism in this country.” Now Mr. Turchynov considers that “the opposition must have their representative as Speaker of Verkhovna Rada and, from our point of view, our representative would serve the interests of the Communists and everyone else.” A bold statement. Why not add Zbigniew Brzezinski as well?
Mr. Yeliashkevych, a rare bird who carries away all his ballots as mementos, regardless of his faction’s decisions, is convinced that “Petro Symonenko would have never collected so many votes without the President’s help. The Communist leader must have met with Leonid Kuchma.” He did, on Wednesday, June 17 in broad daylight. However, following Presidential Representative Roman Bezsmertny’s logic, if the President had appeared on the radio at 3 p.m. Thursday, Comrade Symonenko’s being elected would not even have been considered. Mr. Bezsmertny also claims that only eight NDP Deputies could have steered Left and that the other “traitors” came from other Group Four factions.
Natalia Vitrenko (publicly branded as traitor by the Communists, something obviously improving her image) expressed her sympathy for Volodymyr Filenko, one of the “double people’s” leaders, telling him that “a decent faction, once it has declared its stand, must keep to it.” Relying on her own estimates, she thinks that “more than half the NDP faction voted for Symonenko.”
Why? What for? Ms. Vitrenko believes one of the reasons is the NSDC sessions that scared so many business people, giving the President leeway in the tax sphere, among other things. Not likely, because going to bed with a Red to get away from a reformist sounds exciting but is not likely to be much fun.
More probably, the NDP did not expect such a disastrous outcome, paving the way for Ivan Pliushch, acting according to the you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours principle. As for Hromada, it played its usual game of Simple Simon: never acting when expected and then jumping the gun.
The new round will face off Peasant Party leader Oleksandr Tkachenko and democrat Ivan Pliushch.
Since it was previously agreed that after the Symonenko solo no one would interfere with the Pliushch solo, the NDP candidate must have felt offended and withdrew.
Oleksandr Tkachenko was put to the vote at 18.30. Result: 148 ayes.






