Yevhen Marchuk Thinks Premier’s Office Is Mythicized

National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) Secretary Yevhen Marchuk has excluded the possibility of being appointed prime minister, considering that the government should be headed by “a relatively young politician” who can prove to the West that this country is not veering off the course of reforms. “Retro is good in art, but, in my opinion, retro is no good at all in such things like a premier,” he said on May 11 in an Interfax-Ukraine interview, answering a question of how he assesses his chances to head the government. The NSDC secretary announced that he “has had no consultations” with political forces about his becoming premier and expressed confidence that the president would not propose his candidacy for parliamentary consideration. “The return to this office of anybody, not only me, who has already served as premier can only mean that certain personalities are the only pebble on the beach. But this is not true because there are a lot of relatively young people with new visions of the situation,” Mr. Marchuk said.

He is convinced that it is vital “as many new people as possible work as premiers and vice-premiers... When we have a structured political system, a qualified opposition, and when the opposition political parties have a team of people who have already had experience of work in the executive branch, then we will find it easier to carry out political reform.” In his opinion, none of today’s parties, “even of those from large coalitions, have a full-fledged team for a government.”

Simultaneously Mr. Marchuk reiterated there are “quite a few” candidates who could really lead the government. Among them he named Anatoly Kinakh, chairman of the Ukrainian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, and People’s Deputy Serhiy Tyhypko, leader of the Trudova Ukrayina (Labor Ukraine) Party.

According to Mr. Marchuk, while visiting the US he got the impression that the West “has mythicized the office of the prime minister of Ukraine.” As reported earlier, the NSDC secretary took part in the Washington hearings of the US Congress Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Ukraine on the Crossroads: Ten Years after Gaining Independence, on May 2 and had, as he put it, “a lot of routine meetings” with representatives of the State Department, the White House, and the US National Security Council. According to Mr. Marchuk. the West “says openly, ‘The name or the person appointed (prime minister — Ed.) will be read by us as a signal of whether it is the advocate of European integration or of a tough administrative course of economic management’.”

The main thing, Mr. Marchuk believes, is “the first steps, the first actions” of the new premier. The same opinion, according to the NSDC secretary, was expressed in Washington by some US Congress representatives he talked to. At the same time, “it was, if not a surprise, then at least new information” for high US officials “when I said that the course of reforms is mapped out by the president, not the premier, and this is formalized in the president’s annual message to the parliament for next year, which sets out our economic, social, and international objectives.” For this reason, he thinks, “one should not be unduly afraid” of how the West will accept the new premier: “There are good candidates who, although not very well known in the West, are sure to quickly dispel these myths and fears.”

Mr. Marchuk also stated he had pointed out in Washington that reforms are being carried out by the key ministers, not by the premier alone. “The premier is an important figure, but the key ministers, those of the economy and finance, are the real workhorses,” he said. In all probability, these ministers will remain, he thinks. “They have been sweating over reforms, promoted the growth of GDP and industrial output as well as of structural changes, and they know what is still to be done.”

Answering the agency’s question if the new government will work only until the parliamentary elections, Mr. Marchuk said, “We must understand what the end of the parliamentary elections is. The election will be held in March (2002 — Ed.), then it will take the parliament two months to organize itself, i.e., until May. So there is a year ahead... This is a considerable period of time.”