Yevhen MARCHUK: «President has lowered Ukraine to his own level»

The night of August 31, Yevhen Marchuk held a news conference in Simferopol. The local press suggested — not completely without reason — that it was the candidate's response to Leonid Kuchma's appearance on Crimean television Monday. Thematically grouped, his answers to most characteristic questions will probably serve as an additional explanation of the regime's use of the «popularization method with regard to only one candidate, trying to put the whole society on a starvation diet of information,» barring all other candidates entry to the broad information theater of operations; for the regime, this is the easiest opportunity to keep from the public eye the incomparability of other personalities vying with the current President in the election marathon. A primitive fear of frightening facts.

POWER IS NOT PRIVATE PROPERTY

Recently, our esteemed President has responded very sharply to the fact that political struggle implies a transfer of power from one person to the next. Power is not the private property of the incumbent President. Elections are precisely an encroachment on power by constitutional means. This is the norm. It is true that other politicians crave power, eager to take it away from the President. This is stipulated by the Constitution and it is standard practice everywhere. Now if one regards power as private property, of course the prospect of losing it will make one seriously nervous.

However, I don't know of any macroeconomic, production, or social indices that could justify Leonid Kuchma's claims to another term in office. He has done everything possible to bring Ukraine back to the 1970s, even 1950s, considering certain parameters. His presidency has made our society turn back. The President has brought Ukraine down his own level. I see my task in raising Ukraine from that level. I would pose the President only one question, Where is your progress report on your five years of presidency?

BANG GOES THE DREAM OF FALSIFICATION

Why should the President's team react so feverishly, hysterically to the Kaniv agreement? Because that document answered certain urgent questions in this society. First, it showed that there are politicians capable of coming to terms and solving the elections problem, tactically or strategically, already in the first round. This agreement actually bungled the most cherished dream of the President's entourage: rigging the elections. We all understand that, by combining efforts, Marchuk, Tkachenko, Moroz, and Oliynyk are quite able to neutralize any attempts at falsifying the vote.

Second, it also frustrated the bullying technologies being currently used most extensively — I mean bullying the electorate, managers of enterprises, local councils, and businesses. There are quite enough examples showing that the reigning authorities have launched a campaign of moral and psychological terror.

Finally, the Kaniv agreement scared them mostly because under the new circumstances the President may well lose the campaign in the first round.

As for Communist leader Petro Symonenko, I have serious doubts that he will join our agreement. I was present when the subject was discussed with him August 24 — we were finishing work on the agreement. I thought he would never sign it. Primarily because the Communist Party is so very ambitious; a resolution was passed that only the CPU and its candidate can win the election campaign and assume responsibility for the domestic situation. Also, after he didn't sign the fair elections agreement I did not hear any clear statement from him. However, this fact itself places him in the same league with Leonid Kuchma and Natalia Vitrenko. There is some logic in this.

SINGLE CANDIDATE: A DIFFICULT BUT REAL OPPORTUNITY

We are not that naive, and nor do we entertain any political illusions about a single candidate. It will be anything but easy. Everyone of us has his own ambitions, constituency, and of course, each is sure now that he will be that single candidate. You know this as well as we do. However, we cannot afford to focus on ourselves only; we proceed from the assumption that we will have enough common sense to reach an understanding. Maybe the hard way, maybe suffering losses, but we will.

Even now we know for sure that we have common views on the overall government structure — I mean certain people occupying certain posts in the center and on the regional level — and on the problems that have accumulated in terms of the interrelationships between local self-government authorities and state administrations. There are a great many problems that must be solved now and about which we have similar or identical ideas.

I will now answer a question I am often posed. I am not afraid of accusations that I have changed my political stand. Sharp, testing question were voiced at the every first news conference after we signed the fair elections agreement. Questions relating to the land, national symbols, Western Ukraine, postwar history. We gave different answers. I will never believe that, say, Oleksandr Tkachenko can consider the possibility of my changing my views, just as I wouldn't expect him to change his. And the same applies to Oleksandr Moroz. Meanwhile, the regime is making clumsy, rudely cynical attempts to interpret our agreement in a different light, claiming that this purely political alliance represents some kind of unification of our worldviews. I call this speculation, because the agreement we made does not mean that any of us has suddenly adopted a certain universal doctrine of the three. This is absurd.

There is the main principle, a starting position uniting us: the ruination of the Ukrainian economy over the past five years, worse than under the Nazi occupation. What is there to prevent politicians from combining efforts when faced with a major threat to their country? A threat which became especially noticeable in the information sphere. Suppose the attack on the Crimean TV stations and freezing the STB bank accounts are the regime's retribution for their not singing the praises of the current President? Can this alone not be sufficient reason for joint action by politicians entertaining different views of the world but adhering to democratic principles and wishing to put an end to the ongoing madness now flourishing?

We will identify a single candidate after we finally agree on the name. I think it won't happen earlier than two weeks before the election date. If and when it happens there will be a very strong likelihood of the campaign ending in the first round. Actually, this is the main reason for Leonid Kuchma's team's hysteria, including foul language and regular publications in Fakty .

ABUSE OF POWER HAS NO STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS

They are trying to force people into a state of all-embracing hopeless fear. We must stop this process. We will bring to justice all those who seem to have forgotten what the law is all about. Many heads of administrations lack basic legal knowledge. Without noticing it, they committed offenses punishable under the Criminal Code, mainly in terms of abuse of power and malfeasance in office. We will prove that what is happening is actually the theft of budget funds. Ranking bureaucrats like governors and their deputies summon managers and other subordinate officials for dressing down, bullying, and otherwise mistreating them. In other words, the bureaucratic machine, being paid from the state budget, is canvassing for only one candidate, and this is expressly forbidden by the presidential elections law. They have staged a host of such meetings and conferences, using microphones and tapes, even allowing media people to attend, inadvertently — because of their ignorance in the legal domain — supplying solid evidence of how people are being brainwashed and bullied into voting for Leonid Kuchma. They have committed a great many such offenses and placed them on record themselves. In fact, the impression is that they were advised by one of our lawyers on how to put such transgressions on record correctly. When challenged, they mumble something about success never being blamed. Well, that's pretty archaic. They will all be brought to account. Abuse of power has no statute of limitations.

UNDERLINING THE PAST

I state with complete confidence that Ukraine and all the people living in this country, all ethnic groups, will inevitably travel the road of civil reconciliation. Today, the Left and Right extremists persist in dragging from the past all those confrontations, including bloodshed, turning back pages in the book of history to those highly dramatic, sinister passages, trying to revive them in the present reality, getting involved themselves, and struggling to involve young people who want no part of it. Ask a 15-year-old guy, with all his thoughts directed toward the future, and ask him whether he wants to fight in a civil war dredged up from the past, with a 15-year-old girl from Ternopil. He will say no. No one wants this. I am sure that one and all in Ukraine will eventually understand a politician undertaking the hard task of guiding this country through acts of civil reconciliation. Mark my word, this will happen in the next five to seven years. A nation cannot move forward being afflicted with this grave disease of the past, unless one draws a line under that past. I understand that there is much speculation about this approach of mine, and that certain such speculations are being used in the election campaign. Still, I am sure that a politician must play fair, even during a period as crucial as the presidential marathon.