Yevhen MARCHUK: “The Kaniv Four has demonstrated the universally accepted European political principle of rallying different political forces”

Foresight is one of the most important elements of political tactics. It is easy to note that the political foresight of experienced politicians is often more accurate than that of political scientists and journalists. This is only natural, for the degrees of responsibility are different. As long as a month ago I said at a press conference in Simferopol that the Kaniv Four might transform into a Kaniv Two and that I see no tragedy in this. At that time, few paid attention.

I do not think somebody will deny that the four forced all the media and the President personally to speak about themselves.

All kinds of jibes and even aggression against the Kaniv Four, including those in which the President was involved, helped very much to break through the information blockade organized by the authorities against me and other candidates. Moreover, there is, as is known, a staid stereotype on the level of everyday-life consciousness: they mostly attack the one whom they fear most of all, the one who is strong, the one who is a real rival.

Leonid Kuchma's team has convincingly demonstrated in the time the Kaniv Four existed that it is not afraid of the Communists. All instruments of attack were not aimed at them. They were forgotten. It is the Kaniv Four that has become the main strategic target.

In the heat of the struggle, the current President's hidden allies were disclosed and his true rivals were identified. Mr. Kuchma's campaign workers never looked back. They never analyzed themselves. As a result, they gave out their supporters in the ranks of the opposition. Some political rookies among the presidential candidates and their structures, lacking the experience of political struggle on this level, willingly joined the jibes against the Kaniv Four. I leave alone their pratfall over the formation of electoral commissions. This process was unfolding, as is known, under the control of Mr. Kuchma's people in most cases. And the fact that little-known politicians and their parties, having no developed structures on the local level, were granted the posts of election commission chiefs in a number of oblasts is self- explanatory. No comment is needed.

As to the Kaniv Four, it has entered the second stage of the election campaign.

The four have so far put forward two members: Yevhen Marchuk and Oleksandr Moroz. The relevant agreement contains specific guidelines for the supporters of each of them. This step contains powerful potential. The changing of the single-candidate-nomination pattern through an intermediate nomination of two candidates has been caused by tactical considerations, with due account of a new wave of aggressiveness on the part of Mr. Kuchma's team.

True, not all members of the Kaniv Four accepted this idea immediately. But, in the final analysis, a compromise was reached, as I foresaw a month ago.

The Kaniv Four members never concealed that they are independent politicians with different viewpoints on a number of important issues but also with very many common features: mainly on the question of averting the threat to Ukraine's economic sovereignty an, hence, sovereignty as a state.

A very dynamic change in the political situation in this country, the pattern of popularity between rival politicians and their support structures, a disastrous fall in the morality of the current President's team (which makes people with elementary moral and ethical norms and constraints think that this team's actions are virtually unpredictable), brings a great element of uncertainty into the problem of choosing an expeditious strategy of political struggle at the concluding stage of the presidential campaign.

I am certain, in particular, that Mr. Kuchma can and must be defeated as early as the first round. Otherwise, the whole might of the machine of mudslinging and provocation, with the unprecedented involvement of state structures and resources, will be aimed in the second round at Mr. Kuchma's single rival (in the first round, he will have to squander this machine's capacities at least against several serious candidates). Moreover, the strategy of struggle should be built not by relying on one ideological, political, and social force or group but, on the contrary, by bringing to the foreground of the whole election campaign the idea of rallying society together, which reflects or, to be more exact, embodies, in aggregate, the idea of the unity of all members of Ukrainian society.

Unfortunately, I have so far failed to convince my K-4 partners that only this strategy can lead us today to victory.

Yes, we have some differing viewpoints, for example, about how we should develop relations with Russia and the CIS. I have practical experience of this work with a wide range of Russian politicians and statesmen, as well as the concrete results of this work.

We look differently at the tactics and methods, but we all agree that cooperation with Russia should be more effective and mutually beneficial. I favor the idea that we must cooperate not with a certain political force in Russia but also with the new political streams in that country, so important for us, and especially with those who have a political future.

Some representative of the presidential team and their mass media came to supposedly powerful conclusions as a result of their mental work: the discovery that members of the Kaniv Four have different viewpoints on some important things. But in fact nobody hid this from the very outset. Marchuk has not become Tkachenko, nor has Tkachenko turned into Moroz, nor or vice versa.

I was fully aware that we would have to go down a difficult road searching for compromise. So were my colleagues. The greater the politicians are, the more difficult it is to reach a compromise. And we showed that we had passed the first stage of seeking a compromise. You can imagine how difficult it was for Mr. Tkachenko, in his capacity of Verkhovna Rada speaker, to give into Mr. Moroz. But he did. And do you think it was easy to do for the young politician Mr. Oliynyk?

The Kaniv Four, as the political phenomenon of this year, is not yet being seriously discussed by political analysts. Most of them are fixed on one thing: who and when will be nominated on behalf of the Kaniv Four? In reality, this is a far more complex phenomenon in the political life of this country.

The Kaniv Four members will still have to traverse the difficult road of making deals and compromises. It is not ruled out that some disputable points will have to be debated on a wider basis, so that a proper decision can be made. This is a norm of political life, but only in a democratic state.

What kind of a coalition government can we talk about today (Mr. Kuchma is now trying to use this idea to woo some politicians to his ranks), if the government even today adheres to a different principle? For instance, no sooner had the former Deputy Premier Kuratchenko said that to privatize oblast electricity generating facilities would at present be harmful, he was dismissed on the next day without any public explanation.

The point is precisely in that the Kaniv Four has demonstrated the generally accepted European political principle of rallying together different political forces and figures on the basis of compromise.

Of course, it is now easy to foresee that the attacks on the Kaniv Two (Marchuk and Moroz) will intensify, thus helping advertise them. The Kaniv Two's tactics will also change.

I am quite satisfied with the fact that Mr. Moroz will be supported by Mr. Tkachenko and Mr. Oliynyk, and Mr. Marchuk will continue his election campaign on his own.

On the other hand, nobody does anything on his own in presidential elections.

I was nominated by a bloc of four political parties joined by a coalition of another 14 parties.

I am supported by the National Solidarity all-Ukrainian non-governmental association, a coalition of 253 non-governmental organizations, 183 young people's organizations, the strike committees of Donbas coal miners, the SDS League of Women's Organizations, the All-Ukrainian League of Cheated Bank Depositors, The Military with Marchuk into the Twenty-First Century NGO, and a whole series of other non-governmental and trade union organizations.

This decision will only increase the number of my supporters.

In addition, the Kaniv Four has stated it would continue to coordinate their steps to prevent election fixing and to render various assistance to each other.