Party of power clone is shown its place as election games become more tangled
At the eleventh hour, Kyiv Mayor Oleksandr Omelchenko changed his mind about taking a leave of absence during his election campaign and challenged Prime Minister Anatoly Kinakh who came in person to the Mayor’s Office to acquaint Mr. Omelchenko with President Kuchma’s edict appointing Deputy Mayor Ihor Shovkun acting head of the Kyiv City Administration. Moreover, the mayor and his supporters have taken several steps on the edge of folly.
According to an Interfax-Ukraine report, the Kyiv City Council instructed Mr. Omelchenko to continue in office during the campaign, as well as to carry on as head the Kyiv City Council’s executive body, the Kyiv City Administration. The session of the Kyiv Council also passed a vote of no confidence in Deputy Head of the City Administration Ihor Shovkun, although Mr. Omelchenko himself did not support the resolution, saying Mr. Shovkun is a dedicated and committed official “untutored in politics, and anyone in his place could have made the same mistake.” But the big mistake, definitely, was not complying with the president’s edict.
Meanwhile, members of the Yednist (Unity) Party fraction in Verkhovna Rada (Omelchenko is Yednist chairman – Ed.) has appealed to President Kuchma to cancel his edict calling on Omelchenko to step down temporarily.
President Kuchma’s response made public during his visit to Khanty-Mansiysk (Russia) was that Oleksandr Omelchenko must comply with the edict. However, the Yednist leader disagreed with the incumbent president saying he will stay in office until he sees Leonid Kuchma. The mayor also said he advised Ihor Shovkun to continue to perform his duties as deputy head of the Kyiv City Administration for economic issues. Addressing a Kyiv Council emergency session, Mr. Omelchenko told deputies that he tried to get in touch with the president who is now in Tiumen by telephone but the connection was faulty. Yet, the Kyiv mayor managed to link up with Presidential Administration Director Volodymyr Lytvyn who assured him that he had not been involved in preparing the edict. To go by Omelchenko, Mr. Lytvyn, not yet on leave, does not know what presidential orders are signed by Mr. Kuchma.
The whole saga is graphic evidence of how double standards can be used. On the one hand, the ace interpreter of election laws, Mykhailo Riabets, stated that it is not mandatory to leave office for candidates during their election campaign, while on the other hand, the president has expressly recommended that officials running for Verkhovna Rada vacate their seats until after the election. Understandably, it was not that easy for officials to make right choice, especially since highly placed candidates are treated, to put it mildly, on an individual basis, that is, selectively. Some candidates eager to continue pulling the oar in their offices get a green light, while others are requested to pack their bags as soon as possible. In justice, it should be noted that Mr. Omelchenko has no one else but himself to blame for what happened. Once he made the decision to leave, he had to leave: big politics is prone to disorder when, having uttered A, a politician, instead of saying B, acts unpredictably. Was the wrong person was appointed to take over from him? But the vertical chain of command has not been abolished yet, and any new appointments are the business of the president and government. On the other hand, Omelchenko’s Yednist bloc will have to put on its thinking cap before signing on with the pro-presidential faction to be created based on the For A United Ukraine Bloc. In this context, will Our Ukraine become stronger in its determination to support Mr. Omelchenko in running for the Kyiv mayoral post? All this adds up to the present glitch on Ukraine’s political landscape.
It is worth looking at the past and recall the fashion in which Oleksandr Omelchenko won the Kyiv mayor’s post.
It can be quite a revealing trip, because the present leader of Yednist emerged on a political horizon as a heavyweight not due to thankful Kyiv residents, as Mr. Omelchenko’s supporters try insinuate. The facts indicate that his amazing climb to the pinnacle of power and popularity occurred only thanks to Leonid Kuchma. Oleksandr Omelchenko surfaced at the climax of then Mayor Leonid Kosakivsky’s confrontation with the country’s top executive to be appointed new mayor, even before his predecessor’s tenure expired. Having emerged at the right time in the right place, Mr. Omelchenko gradually tightened his grip on power in the capital, despite protests from city council deputies. Needless to say, at that time the mayor showed absolute loyalty to the incumbent, diligently treading the line of the Presidential Administration.
As a kickback, he received a one-year adjournment for the mayor’s election due in 1998, when anyone but the low-rated Omelchenko could have been elected. It turned out that one year was enough for the mayor to raise his prestige with city residents.
Then the conflict between the capital’s city father and central executive erupted, a common thing on the post-Soviet theater, with our flexible laws making it possible for both parties to interpret them any way they want.
Late last year, President Kuchma several times refrained from backing the Yednist Party, which Omelchenko brought back from oblivion. When the criticism did not work, the incumbent requested the court to say whether Omelchenko can double-dip as head of the city state administration and mayor.
But Omelchenko spurned this signal, believing or, perhaps, led to believe that Yednist, headed by him, could really win seats in Verkhovna Rada, something it could do only by taking some votes only from the pro-presidential For A United Ukraine bloc, its most natural rival in terms of political agenda and name. Later, the situation completely got out of hand, when a real chance arose of a marriage between Yednist and Our Ukraine, something which did not sit right with the top executive’s master plan, since an insipid and easily controllable president’s son is one thing and a resolute construction worker who managed to rebuild almost half of Kyiv’s historical center is a totally different one.
Still later, everything was played in accordance with the old Kosakivsky-style scenario, albeit heeding contemporary political winds. First Oleksandr Omelchenko takes leave due to election campaign, appointing his boys to mind the store, then Leonid Kuchma names his candidate for the so rashly vacated office.
