SDPU(o) approve forceful and terse election program

On January 15 one more political force, the Social Democratic Party (united) (SDPU {o}), declared it was prepared to run for parliamentary seats. The declaration was quite resounding, it must be said, with over 1300 delegates from all over Ukraine attending the party’s congress at Kyiv’s October Palace. As we see, the painstaking four-year efforts of the united Social Democrats to set up a diversified regional structure have borne fruit.

“I would like to hope that your party will rely on constructive work and social cohesion during the elections,” says Leonid Kuchma’s greeting read out from the SDPU(o) congress rostrum by Mykola Sliusarevsky, representative of the Presidential Administration. It follows from the greeting that the president hopes that the political forces oriented toward strengthening and improving the international image of our state will set the pace in the next parliament and calls on the Social Democrats to show an example of tolerance and mutual respect during the election campaign. Although the forum organizers decided to put the announcement of the SDPU(o) election list as the last item on the agenda, some information leaked to journalists even before the congress began. There was a sensation: unlike the other parties, the united Social Democrats, as true gentlemen, placed a lady second, not fifth or even third, on the list. The No. 2 SDPU(o) candidate is, in former Soviet parlance, “a modest toiling woman,” an ordinary school teacher from the village of Drabiv, Tamara Proshkuratova, the first among her colleagues to be awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine. “I, an ordinary rural teacher, am not interested in political games,” Ms. Proshkuratova said, addressing the congress. “To my mind, the highest politics is the small child, with his needs and interests.” It should be admitted that party congresses quite seldom hear such penetrating words about seemingly commonplace but simultaneously extremely important things, and, moreover, audiences far from always heed such words so attentively.

Positively appraising the introduction of the twelve-point progress evaluation system and the twelve-year term of study in Ukrainian public schools, Ms. Proshkuratova still complained about what she called baneful influence of Western mass culture on children’s minds and called upon her party comrades to stem this tide. “I have nothing against Schwarzenegger or Marilyn Monroe,” she said, “but it is no good if they are depicted on school copybooks’ front pages, while you can’t find the portrait of a well-known Ukrainian author to show to children!” Ms. Proshkuratova confessed that she had joined the party only recently but the SDPU(o) membership card is her, so to speak, deliberate choice. Party leader Viktor Medvedchuk tops the united Social Democratic list, SDPU(o) parliamentary fraction leader Oleksandr Zinchenko comes third, youth leader Volodymyr Riabika fourth, and Ukraine’s first President Leonid Kravchuk fifth. The latter, incidentally, expressed confidence, in his own aphoristic way: “Time is on our side: it has been working for Social Democracy for 150 years,” and “Ukraine will be run by Social Democrats... I not only believe but will also take part in this,” Mr. Kravchuk said to thunderous applause.

Mr. Kravchuk appealed to his party comrades to change the philosophy and culture of power, observe “the continuity of the generations in power,” and noted that SDPU(o) is a young party because its election list contains many candidates aged about 40, i.e., those who have both energy and experience, with the party leader Viktor Medvedchuk being the most brilliant example.

The sixth rung of the party ladder is occupied by Minister of Education Vasyl Kremin, the seventh to ninth by representatives of the oblast (Transcarpathian, Chernivtsi, and Kharkiv) party organizations, and the tenth by Borys Andresiuk, chairman of the Verkhovna Rada National Security and Defense Committee. Then come People’s Deputies and Deputy Party Chairmen Hryhory Surkis and Ihor Pluzhnikov, Chairman of the State Committee for Construction Valery Cherep, current People’s Deputies Yevhen Syhal, Volodymyr Zaplatinsky and Serhiy Podobiedov. The 27th place belongs to People’s Deputy and Olympic champion Valery Borzov, and the 31st to Vadym Misiura who has the other day left the Socialist Party faction to join the SPDU(o) (incidentally, a recent Dnipropetrovsk session of the Socialist Congress of Youth resolved, as The Day’s correspondent Vadym Ryzhkov reports, to break off his years-long affiliation with the SPU and support the SDPU(o) as a party “that protects the interests of young people and youth organizations”). No. 35 is Oleksiy Mustafin, editor-in-chief of the Inter Television Information Service.

But let us come back to the first part of the United Social Democrats’ congress culminated by the political report of party leader Viktor Medvedchuk. The report not only assessed the current political situation but also gave answers to such questions as who are SDPU(o)’s partners and adversaries, what are the party’s priorities before and after the elections, and, finally, what objectives do the united Social Democrats have going into the campaign. “It is our party that is most of all interested in the consolidation of parliamentary democracy in Ukraine,” the SDPU(o) leader emphasized, “for this is the traditional Social Democratic way.”

In particular, Mr. Medvedchuk expressed an opinion that “the process the journalists have dubbed bloc-building can have both positive and negative consequences:” positive if a bloc is formed on the basis of the ideological proximity of its components and unavoidably negative if otherwise. “I am pleased to note,” he said, “that we have no problems with fashioning a bloc or making up the election list.” If the members of a bloc argue for months over a party quota in the bloc list, it is easy to imagine, the reporter pointed out, just how coherent will be their voting in the future Verkhovna Rada.

The SDPU(o) also differs from other “subjects of the election process,” to quote the leader, in that the united Social Democrats “are not turning parliamentary elections into a rehearsal for the presidential elections.”

As to the shape of the future parliamentary majority, Mr. Medvedchuk thinks the best option would be cooperation between the SDPU(o) and For a United Ukraine, the Democratic Union, the Green Party, Yabluko, and other centrists (Incidentally, while Democratic Union leader Volodymyr Horbulin was present at the congress for a short time, nobody represented Yabluko). According to the leader, the SDPU(o) could become the nucleus of such a political super bloc and would like to “follow the Social Democratic line” in it. Should the centrist forces fail to establish a stable majority, the United Social Democrats will seek “points of contact “ with the moderate representatives of the Left and Center Right camps, but in this case there can only be a question of a floating majority.

Mr. Medvedchuk was also forced, as he himself admitted, to touch on the problem of morality in politics. “We work for all the people,” he said, “we have only political opponents, not enemies. But if they consider us enemies, that is their problem, not ours.” Simultaneously, these people often project themselves as “home- spun preachers of morality” from whom, in Mr. Medvedchuk’s opinion, our society suffers, and in the future “hypocrisy could become a very serious problem for Ukraine.” Still more dangerous, the United Social Democrat leader believes, are politicians convinced of their absolute rightness. They split society into friends and foes, the righteous and the wicked, the pro-Ukrainian and the anti- Ukrainian; they try to project the image of being sinless and omniscient and don the apparel of prophets and saints. They begin to kiss icons in public and portray themselves as saviors of the Fatherland. This “holiness” spreads especially widely on the eve of the elections. Otto von Bismarck once said, “Never does one lie so much as during a war, after a hunt, and before an election.”

Either for this reason or because society, as Mr. Medvedchuk put it, is already tired of opportunism and political adventurism, his party has in fact only one rival, the KPU. However, unlike the Communists, the Social Democrats are marching, as their leader is deeply convinced, into the future, not the past.

Among the things that fundamentally distinguish the SDPU(o) from the other parties now running in the election is perhaps the fact that the latter have bet on ideology (a fact often hinted at in congress speeches). “We think it is time to offer Ukrainian society an ideological path, and we are prepared to do so,” SDPU(o) parliamentary faction leader Oleksandr Zinchenko said in his report on the party’s election program. Pointing at the onstage posters, Mr. Zinchenko noted this was no accident. The portraits of prominent international Social Democratic figures Ferdinand Lassalle, Lesia Ukrainka, Ivan Franko, Vladimir Korolenko, and Willy Brandt, as well as the room-sized slogan “2002, the Year of Social Democracy in Ukraine,” must have symbolized readiness of the united Social Democrats to continue and develop the Social Democratic traditions established by their great predecessors. “We are realists and do not promise the impossible,” Mr. Zinchenko said, “but we know what to do and how.”

Nevertheless, in the forum’s break, journalists quickly brought the party leaders from theory down to practice (it will be noted that the mass media displayed an extremely high interest in the congress of SDPU(o) as one of the key subjects of the current election campaign). In particular, answering journalists’ questions, Mr. Medvedchuk raised the possibility of an early dissolution of parliament. “If Verkhovna Rada continues to be a place of political mayhem, which does no credit to a respected body like this, I think the fractions should voluntarily reduce their working days and plenary sessions and opt for a new election,” he said. Requested by the Interfax-Ukraine correspondent to forecast the lineup of political forces, the SDPU(o) leader opined that those who stand the greatest chances to win the election marathon race are Our Ukraine and For a United Ukraine blocs, the Communist Party of Ukraine, SDPU(o), the Greens, and “some other political parties, which will show their ability to win in the remaining period before Election Day.”