KUCHMA, REFORMER?

“BOTH ARE WORSE”

Our people were cheated twice and they no longer trust anyone. You can't blame them. The Communists' evil, ruthless, and cynical deceit has not been replaced by anything new. Deceit again, although packaged more attractively. Back in 1994, Leonid Kuchma spoke about justice, a new way of life, combating clans, acting in the name of the people, a new course set on radical cleansing and rejuvenating reforms. They have remained words. More deceit. No justice, on the contrary. A giant pyramid of oligarchic clans has been built, so huge and repugnant that people damned the new slogans under which all this was done, and tend to once again plunge into the warm embrace of Communist deceit.

Actually, some do. The rest, no longer trusting anyone or anything, have been taking orders from the powers that be, acting by force of habit, lest things get worse than they are. And trying to make things better remains out of the question. If anything changes it will be for the worst, unless it is the old Soviet way with its cheap sausage made largely from starch. Hence, all such changes should be rejected.

And so we have to be content with that surrogate policy being conducted by the great reformer Leonid Kuchma and his so-called Red opponents. So-called because the phony reformer and his phony opponents are actually birds of a feather playing the same game, acting in the same lethal nationwide show. According to the script, Leonid Kuchma impersonates the Reformer, working for the good of one and all, although by now everybody understands that all this is being done for Kuchma and his men. The Communists go through the motions of criticizing his reforms, acting on the people's behalf, and likewise all that one can do is see this criticism for what it really is, as egotistic as all those “reforms,” aimed exclusively at solving one's personal political and economic problems, getting from the second tier to the first of the Ukrainian elite, receiving key positions, cherishing dreams of a career rather than social revanche.

WHAT REFORMS?

My colleagues and I are categorically opposed to such reforms! They serve only to give rise to criminal clans, destroying whole industries and devastating the economy. No political institutions are developed, parties split, the free press is dying without ever seeing the light of day. The national intelligentsia, one of our rarest gains, this brilliant extraordinary social stratum raised and cultivated despite rather than thanks to that regime, is being laid waste.

In return we have received, on the one hand, a handful of billionaires, characters building mind-boggling fortunes and giving their country nothing in return, and on the other, crowds of former intellectuals, thrown into misery, no longer sure of themselves or anyone else, angry at themselves, their country, and the world. Who will pass judgment on those that have hurled Ukraine down this abyss? And this considering its ideal geopolitical position, in the absence of serious conflicts either within or without, with the center of world civilization a couple of hours flight away?

The Index of Economic Freedom kept by the respected Heritage Foundation is often referred to in Western literature. It places Ukraine 135th among 150 countries, lagging behind almost the all post-Soviet states. Where is that movement toward the market and freedom, praised so much by Kuchma and his toadies? Or maybe there is, and the PACE officials visiting us recently confirmed it? One feels pain and shame at what they found.

Find me a single businessman in Ukraine (barring those rubbing shoulders with Kuchma's entourage) who will support his reforms not in words but in deeds! You won't find any, because Kuchma is working against real business and the market economy. During his presidency he has destroyed even the first weak market sprouts we had grown by the end of the Gorbachev and through the Kravchuk periods.

WHO NEEDS KUCHMA?

He is supported by a handful of businessmen (compared to the rest of the country), maybe several dozen, even hundreds, people granted entry to the executive domain and state budget, with privileges and tax concessions legalized by the President and government. Also by bureaucrats with their own sector in the economy, each with a piece of the pie equivalent to his bureaucratic post. And strange is it may seem, he is supported by some workers on state budget payroll — schoolteachers, physicians, and others with wages immune to all fluctuations and upheavals, people afraid to lose even this little because of the de facto policy of discrimination in its simple Ukrainian version: if you do not support Kuchma you will get fired. So much for his electorate. The rest, employees and employers alike, crowds of de jure and de facto unemployed, expecting no help from Kuchma's regime, are opposed to it, and even if they support it they are pretending, hating it even more deeply at heart. It is precisely the difference between the dramatized and actual attitude toward Kuchma that gives rise to all those unnaturally high ratings we regularly read, watch, and hear in the loyal media.

The oligarchs that bought the United Social Democrats lock, stock and barrel are now feeding us cock-and-bull stories about them personifying a grand idea. They have donned the now popular mask of champions of the people's interests and are making the most of the relevant slogans. In actuality, all of them — Surkis, Medvedchuk, et al. — are typical representatives of the oligarchic clan system created and protected by Kuchma.

I don't know whether they share a swimming pool with the President (as is alleged by many), but I am sure that they feed at the same trough (oops! I mean that they eat using the same brand of table silver). And I even know where it comes from: district heating companies, excise-free tobacco and alcoholic beverages, etc. And that out of every hundred of dollars they “earn” a couple of cents is spent on advertising themselves and Kyiv Dynamo, but this does not significantly change the situation. Incidentally, it would be interesting to know how much exactly they made selling our favorite soccer player Shevchenko. There are various versions of the cost and payment procedures of the deal.

Now that the election is so near, craving victory, the regime will stop at nothing: bullying, cheating (however unprofessionally and awkwardly), slinging truckloads of mud at opponents, juggling the facts, faking polls, distributing millions of copies of campaign literature never accounted or reported, and finally by completely monopolizing the media.

THIRD ROAD: AWAY FROM KUCHMA AND COMMUNISM

Unlike the Communist model (no one is allowed anything) or that of Kuchma (everything is allowed, but only to our people), we propose ours: everybody can do everything, but only within the limits of the law. Such is the imperative of the day, the norm which, if and when implanted in our consciousness and implemented in our society, will get it off the ground, leading it to progress and justice.

This is the third route for Ukraine, with reforms being carried out not in the interests of a handful of oligarchs or the mythical “everybody” (as mendaciously proposed by the Communists), but in the interests of the majority, which is practical enough. Formation and strengthening of the middle class would be the most important, decisive indicator of this course.

Indeed, there would be rich, perhaps very rich people, but they would be different from those we have today. Their wealth would be reflected in staggering amounts of tax payments, which they will pay all their lives, filling the national coffers, steadily creating jobs, introducing progressive technologies, as well as producing trained personnel and professional administrators. We will be proud of such entities and people, the way America is proud of Henry Ford or Bill Gates, because such people will give us progress and well-being, enrich us with technological and industrial accomplishment, making the rest of the world treat us with respect.

TWO CAMPS: FALSE AND REAL

Apart from Kuchma, all the presidential candidates are divided into two camps. The first, orthodox Left, is represented by Petro Symonenko and Natalia Vitrenko, both working in a roundabout, more subtle way to put Kuchma back in office.

The other camp is made up of a group of candidates reflecting the truly Left and Right forces. With time they will have a chance to form a real modern political spectrum with its civilized Left and Right components. Here it does not matter much who is supporting what views or campaigning for whom, because all of them are now in the anti-Kuchma, anti- Communist camp.

Many realize today that a single candidate nominated by the Kaniv Four stands a real chance of beating the existing camarilla in all its manifestations. We also believe that if this single candidate finally materializes it will mean, first, a real stride toward victory; second, regardless of the outcome of the presidential campaign, this will be useful in developing political life in Ukraine. It will be a tangible embodiment of the idea of social partnership in new post-totalitarian conditions, an effective cooperation between the truly Right and truly Left political forces in the struggle against a criminal surrogate policy. Later, they may well be joined by others. But for this to happen, they must reach agreement and keep their word given the people when entering such an alliance.

However, if the current regime wins and Kuchma gets into the runoff with either Symonenko or Vitrenko, we will oppose both. We call on our fellow citizens to follow suit, because this would result in elections without anyone being elected, a cheap disgraceful farce. I am sure that any honest individual would find choosing between Kuchma on the one hand and Symonenko or Vitrenko on the other ridiculous if it werenot so sad.

Be it as it may, I am sure that the news of Ukraine's death have been greatly exaggerated. Suppose Kuchma is reelected. And word has it (remarkably coming not from Kuchma's opponents but from his own campaign centers headed by people like Volkov, Derkach, Horbulin, and scores of hired Russian image- makers) that the deal has been fixed and understanding with Russia's tycoons reached, and that there is a whole lot of money being spent on the campaign. Some even claim that Leonid Kuchma has been assigned a role akin to that of the British Queen, with real power in Ukraine to be wielded by those same Russian sponsors. I never trust hearsay. Do you?

After all, we don't need any British models, even though we want very much to become European and civilized. Why not look closer around. Russia, for example. Look what happened to Yeltsin and his entourage. Do we want it that way? Have our eyes already popped out of our heads?

PS: The Editor was about to cross out the closing sentence, considering it superfluous from the literary standpoint but left it on second thought. The author provides a wealth of arguments saying the current President must go, along with other reasons that have appeared in

The Day often enough. Yet part of this society does not trust arguments overmuch, so perhaps Volodymyr Filenko, a reputed jokester, addressed that final passage to them.