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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

Russian Second-Hand is Being Prepared for the Presidential Elections in Ukraine

13 November, 2012 - 00:00
Photo by Valery Myloserdov,The Day: It's getting crowded on the Left wing

The new political season appears to be special for this country. Its principal motto is “cooperation”. Talk about close and, of course, constructive interaction of all branches of state authority can be heard everywhere — it even muffles calls for the President’s impeachment and Premier’s resignation. Verkhovna Rada Speaker Oleksandr Tkachenko and Prime Minister Valery Pustovoitenko stress the issue of cooperation on a regular basis. President Leonid Kuchma speaks about cooperation less frequently; on the other hand, neither the head of state personally, nor his administration officials (in particular, Presidential Chief of Staff Yevhen Kushnariov) have for a rather long time (two months or so) even alluded to “harsh measures” with regard to the lawmakers.

Certainly, we can speculate that the current financial trouble has forced the politicians to forget about the upcoming presidential elections and close ranks similar to the way forest inhabitants make a truce during a great fire. At the same time, there is also another explanation for this, according to which the main presidential candidates’ teams have already developed their strategies for future struggle, and these strategies do not assume any radical steps at this point in time.

To date, President Kuchma and Yevhen Marchuk have announced their intention to take part in the presidential election campaign. Also running for President will be Serhiy Holovaty, Natalia Vitrenko, and Serhiy Chukmasov. At the moment, Leonid Kuchma is deriving much profit from his “reformer-against-the-leftists” strategy. However, this scheme has already collapsed in Russia; besides, not only leftists will take part in the presidential race. And, most importantly, the President will have a difficult time explaining his “reform-aimed” activities to voters.

Let’s take a close look at the Leonid Kuchma — Oleksandr Moroz political model, which the Presidential Administration brains are trying to develop. The Socialist leader has still never spoken about his plans in any more or less concrete terms. The contours of quite specific models for the two politicians can be seen rather distinctly. For the time being, let’s put aside the candidates’ characteristics and potential platforms, and let’s now try to examine the purely technological aspects of likely scenarios.

There has been much talk lately that Kuchma’s team will make efforts not to “allow” the former speaker to take part in the runoff. Two main ways of accomplishing this goal are possible. The first one is to lower Moroz’s personal popularity, and the second is to implement measures that will cause a rift in the leftist electorate, as well as to preventively “destroy” those members of elite groups that can provide Moroz with political and financial support. It is obvious that some steps are being made in both directions. The fact that Moroz was barred from being re-elected Parliament Speaker can be considered the first relative success of the presidential team. If the Presidential Administration analysts have taken into account the experience of the last parliamentary campaign, Moroz is not likely to be “humiliatingly” criticized by the state-controlled media, however, he should probably still expect from them some petty caustic remarks, such as the one about awarding him with presidential distinctions.

On the second front, Kuchma’s team also seems to have doubtless success – Progressive Socialist leader Natalia Vitrenko has already announced her decision to enter the presidential race; disagreements between Moroz’s Socialist Party and its traditional allies, the Communist and the Peasant parties, are deepening; and new Parliament Speaker Oleksandr Tkachenko, formerly Moroz’s faithful ally, seems to have decisively cast aside the “confrontation policy”, and, as has been noted, is tirelessly demonstrating his unshakable disposition to cooperate with the executive branch. Finally, as some believe, there will be an imminent split in Hromada, whose leader Pavlo Lazarenko remains Moroz’s most reliable ally and financial support. Victory of the current President seems to be a sure thing to such an extent that we should perhaps cancel the elections to avoid unnecessary expenditures on a mere formality.

Moroz’s strategic line seems to be much more flexible and adapted to the current situation. Bit by bit, he has even started to turn his defeat in the speaker race into an advantage. Now he is not part of the “authorities,” and thus cannot be held personally responsible either for the crisis, or for the decline in people’s living standards. His statement on the immorality of bestowing awards on the upper-level government officials (made in connection with his recent nomination for a medal) came across not so much as an acknowledgment of his partial responsibility, but rather as drawing a line under this responsibility, which he left behind in the remote past.

Even more interesting is the situation with Moroz’s friends and allies. Once Napoleon said that regiments must take different routes to a battle site, but they should fight together. It seems like this is the exact method that Moroz followers are using at the moment. In principle, any other tactic of the political and business structures supporting Moroz would be inappropriate — does it really make sense to subject oneself to numerous inspections by the fire command and the tax administration at the time when the “monarch’s eye” is sweeping the country in search of a victim?

Pavlo Lazarenko is still there to satisfy the hunting instincts of the Presidential Administration, both because he has a chance to stand his ground and because he will not be left alone anyway. It is worth looking at the talk about an imminent rift in Hromada from this particular angle. This split talk has not subsided since the very day when Pavlo Lazarenko, Yuliya Tymoshenko, and Oleksandr Yeliashkevych reanimated the all-Ukrainian union from political non-existence. Clearly, we cannot rule out Tymoshenko’s attempt to “pull her allies out of the fire.” It is also possible that while doing so, she will at some point enjoy a certain measure of sympathy from the President’s side, which in this way will be able to put another “victory” on its record. However, at her last press conference, Madame Tymoshenko let the cat out of the bag by saying that she sees Moroz as Kuchma’s successor in the presidential post, so further “promotion” of the dissenter and her impeachment initiative (a not trivial move, by the way) in the state-run media will most likely be stopped.

It is still premature to say if the Administration will manage to “shake” Communist leader Petro Symonenko’s ambitions. In 1994, he was nominated a presidential candidate, but he withdrew his candidacy in favor of Moroz without even conducting an election campaign. It is not difficult to predict that he will do the same thing in 1999, the only difference being that he will most likely go through most of the campaign stages — to maintain both his party’s popularity and the necessary illusions among Administration strategists.

The key figure of the drama being staged is Oleksandr Tkachenko. His election as Verkhovna Rada Speaker is viewed by many as a major victory of Leonid Kuchma’s parliamentary allies. The current impression of Tkachenko’s orientation towards the President is based on his election as Speaker against Lazarenko’s (and Moroz’s) will, on his daily calls for peace and accord with the government, and on the fact that by delaying deliberation of the President’s economic edicts by Verkhovna Rada, he is actually letting them go into effect as soon as possible, thus following the President’s line. In reality, however, all this does not look convincing. And the issue here is not just the dubiousness of the semi-detective story about Hromada deputies (fifty mandates under the gun) being fraudulently persuaded, in the absence of Pavlo Lazarenko, to vote for Oleksandr Tkachenko.

Let’s now try to examine the real line of the present Speaker. Some historical background is appropriate here. When in fall 1994 the first indications of the President — Verkhovna Rada conflict surfaced, Kuchma’s most intelligent staff members proposed not to aggravate relations but, on the contrary, to demonstrate consent in every way possible and, figuratively speaking, to “smother Moroz in a friendly hug.” Such brain trusters were fired soon afterwards, and a four-year-long “war of powers” started, in which the President has never won. It is totally obvious that now Oleksandr Tkachenko is resorting to the exact same tactic Kuchma rejected four years ago, and he is using it skillfully. What is really going on? Delays in consideration of the draft edicts in Verkhovna Rada (against the backdrop of permanent talk about cooperation) have resulted in a situation, whereby the President and the government alone are held accountable for the social and economic situation in the country, while it is totally impossible to blame anything on the lawmakers. Over the course of several months, Tkachenko managed to put Kuchma in the very position that our President has been so carefully avoiding during the last four years. In view of all Kuchma’s opponents, an additional advantage of this situation is the fact that in his edict-making activity, the President violates the Constitution with depressing regularity, thereby ensuring exceptionally favorable conditions for criticism that extends as far as possible initiation of an impeachment procedure.

Economists believe that most of the edicts are a necessary and inevitable evil. Even the most optimistically-minded are not expecting any positive results over the next year and a half. When next October the voters will face the question of who is to blame, they will not have great difficulty in finding an answer.

INCIDENTALLY

Oleksandr Tkachenko believes it would be natural to create a Peasants Party faction in Parliament. Interfax-Ukraine reports that, when answering the journalists' questions last week, the Speaker said that the word "split" should be "thrown out" of the relations between the Socialists and the Peasants. "Creation of another faction in Parliament is not a split but rather an accomplishment of the third-level goal, since, having set up two factions, we remain in the Left-Centrist bloc," noted Tkachenko.

The Speaker pointed out that the Socialist and the Peasant parties united on the same platform before the elections in order to win seats in Parliament according to party lists. The correctness of this decision, according to Tkachenko, is proven by the fact that the bloc won the third largest number of votes during the elections. Tkachenko said that in Verkhovna Rada, "we did everything for our representatives to get into the governing bodies, and we achieved it with honor."

Despite the "Left Center" representatives' mutual assurances of carrying on cooperation, the third stage of the Socialist-Peasant bloc activity will probably be the last one. Serhiy Dovhan told The Day that as long as he remains Peasant Party leader, "the party will be taking an absolutely independent policy line, while the Socialists believe that we should unreservedly support all their initiatives." Dovhan also said that the Peasant faction "is not going to play the government resignation game" and will not support this proposal in order to avoid creating a nervous situation in the society.

 

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