[O]ne
more time Kuchma has demonstrated his unshakable position of the leader
of a geostrategically important country that permanently balances on
the verge of economic collapse but nevertheless successfully maneuvers
its political course through the conflicting interests of Washington
and Moscow. Taking into account the latest outburst of popular love
for and confidence in the president during Ukraine’s constitutional
referendum, Kuchma may be said to be one of the most successful politicians
on the post-Soviet territory.
-
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Report
25 April 2000 (Vol. 2, No. 16)
On
April 16th, Ukraine held a referendum on extending the powers
of its president. President Leonid Kuchma, after winning reelection
in November 1999, proposed putting six questions to the people, although
Ukraine’s Constitutional Court struck down two as "unconstitutional."
If successful, the Ukrainian head of state would have a popular mandate
to dissolve the parliament (Rada) whenever it failed to agree on a budget.
In addition, he would reduce the size of the Rada by one third, add
an upper chamber composed of the governors of Ukraine’s regions, the
vast majority of whom happen to be his allies, and strip members of
the Rada of immunity from criminal prosecution.
Kuchma
must have felt he had no choice. Desiring a secure future for his country
within the NATO alliance, and continued economic assistance from the
West, he was constantly hampered in his goals by a combination of a
Leftist-dominated Rada and increasing pressure from Moscow to repay
Ukraine’s staggering gas bill. With his back to the wall, Kuchma took
the bold step of holding a nationwide referendum. In a country beset
by corruption, economic stagnation, and an inability to move ahead,
the vote was overwhelmingly in his favor.
THE
BELOVED LEADER
When
Leonid Kuchma became president of Ukraine in 1994, the regional breakdown
showed his support came chiefly from voters in the industrial, Russian-speaking,
eastern part of the republic. Kuchma’s voters were reportedly unhappy
with the "Ukrainianization" undertaken by Kuchma’s predecessor,
Leonid Kravchuk, a former Ukrainian SSR ideology chief from western
Ukraine who signed the treaty dissolving the Soviet Union at the end
of 1991.
Kuchma
and his cohorts hailed from Dnipropetrovsk, home to Soviet-era, city-sized
enterprises. Kuchma himself was director of the USSR’s largest missile
manufacturing plant and a Central Committee member of Soviet Ukraine’s
Communist Party for ten years, right up to the Soviet breakup. He had
been a Soviet Communist Party (CPSU) member since 1960, and served as
the CPSU secretary at a missile engineering and design bureau. Both
Kuchma and Kravchuk had cast aside their previous Communist Party affiliation
in the interests of building the New Ukraine.
Kuchma’s
second-round defeat of Kravchuk in 1994 happened in no small part thanks
to the support of the Communist Party. Kuchma originally came to power
as a pragmatic factory manager with little patience for Ukrainian nationalism.
Swirling rumors about billionaire George Soros having financed Kuchma’s
campaign surfaced and disappeared.
Four
years later, having learned to speak Ukrainian, Kuchma was running against
Petro Symonenko, leader of the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU). This
time Kuchma pinned the blame for Ukraine’s ills on leftists dominating
the fractious parliament (Rada). In the 1999 elections, Kuchma cloaked
himself in the Ukrainian colors and held himself out to the West as
Ukraine’s only hope. Only he could lead reform and defend Ukraine from
the "Reds."
By
1999, the West had started to be critical of Kuchma. He hadn’t put Ukraine’s
state-owned enterprises up for sale to foreigners yet, and his associates
had become very wealthy. But in spring, Vyacheslav Chornovil, Ukraine’s
most famous Soviet-era dissident and leader of the now-fragmented Ukrainian
National Movement (Rukh), had become the latest of the USSR’s oppositionist
stalwarts to die in an auto "accident" when one of the wheels
fell off his car. There remained only Leftist parties – Communists and
Socialists – as serious opposition to Kuchma.
The
Communist and Socialist candidates claimed to represent the huge swathes
of Ukrainian society – particularly miners and industrial laborers from
eastern Ukraine – who hadn’t received wages for several years, and who
had never had any understanding or sympathy for reform or privatization.
Also, they appeared to represent old age pensioners picking scraps out
of garbage dumps to stay alive.
When
Kuchma defeated Symonenko handily in the second round of the presidential
election, his support had apparently come from western Ukraine. This
represented a dramatic swing in Ukraine’s political demographics. In
1994, the Russophile Kuchma had supposedly garnered only 3-5% of the
vote in the three principal "oblasts" (regions) in western
Ukraine – Lviv, Ternopil, and Ivano-Frankivsk. Allegedly, the "nationalistic"
western Ukrainians’ had put aside their previous aversion to Kuchma
in favor of keeping the Communist Symonenko out at all cost.
KUCHMA
MOVES FORWARD BOLDLY
No
sooner had Kuchma made his plans known for a referendum than the Council
of Europe began issuing warnings that holding such a referendum would
threaten Ukraine’s membership and imperil the country’s further integration
into Europe. It fired off a salvo of complaints at Kuchma on the basis
of the Venice Commission’s analysis of the "legality" of putting
his four questions to his people in a nationwide vote.
But
the Council was unconvincing. It had never been very vocal about the
legitimacy of previous Ukrainian parliamentary and presidential elections
as expressions of popular will. It was as if somehow a referendum couldn’t
be "democratic," whereas elections for the legislature and
executive could. Was the Council indicating that it didn’t believe popular
votes in Ukraine were free and fair? If so, its past endorsements of
Kuchma’s electoral victories were lies. More the point, the Council
appeared to be trying to force a norm on Ukraine’s domestic political
system to fit in with its own "model" for Europe, and thus
interfering with the sovereign democratic will of an independent state.
In the face of the Council of Europe’s apparent hypocrisy and attempts
to violate his country’s sovereignty, Kuchma made clear his intention
to go ahead.
IN
THE HEART OF "KUCHMA COUNTRY"
I
traveled to Lviv (known in Russian as Lvov), the largest city in western
Ukraine, to observe the referendum. Lviv was allegedly the nucleus of
Kuchma’s political support in the country, as reflected in the 1999
presidential elections.
Lviv
was a Galician fortress town founded in the 13th century,
and ruled by Poland from the 14th century until 1772. The
natural and architectural beauty of the place is stunning. But, having
been under Soviet control since Stalin acquired it under the Nazi-Soviet
pact of 1939, it looks typically run-down and dirty. McDonald’s has
arrived, of course, as well as casinos, cramped bars and café-restaurants
where patrons listen to thumping disco music while eating. A few small
shops sell European designer wear at a big markup.
As
a whole, the sprinkling of neon and other garish signs and ads appears
to be light dressing on a Sovietized metropolis of faded former grandeur
that hasn’t really gone anywhere in the last ten years. Middle-aged
and elderly people shuffle along the crowded sidewalks with blank facial
expressions betraying despair. Beggars stand, sit, or kneel on every
block, while the youth saunter past, confident that their foreign-made
leather jackets – the uniform of choice for the generation that can’t
remember the NKVD – will set them apart from the "peasantry."
When
I arrived in Lviv, a demonstration was going on in the central square.
I was told that several local newspapers had been shut down or "taxed"
out of existence after expressing opinions critical of the regime. Kuchma
had put top-level advisers and cabinet members in charge of nationwide
TV stations, and given his allies responsibility for monitoring press
and media activity in the regions. Radio and TV stations who said anything
critical of Kuchma or his functionaries in the central or regional government,
I was told, ran a big risk of losing their licenses. Several reporters
and journalists had suffered police harassment for speaking out against
Kuchma’s leadership, and one prominent opposition editor had recently
been beaten up while walking home from work one night. But the demonstration
failed to draw sizeable crowds while I was there, and apart from a few
unfortunate tales like the ones mentioned, "Kuchma Country" seemed relatively
peaceful and under control.
THE
REFERENDUM OF POPULAR LOVE
There
was very little of the polling station commotion typical of elections
in the former Soviet Union. "Hospitality tent" gatherings
with refreshments and socializing in the back rooms were the main event.
The referendum was being treated as quiet Sunday recreational activity.
Friends and neighbors were getting together for a little food and drink
while supplementing their $20-a-month incomes with whatever they received
for carrying out the poll.
Peace
and orderliness reigned on referendum day. The
referendum went smoothly and largely without incident. At each of the
more than 20 polling stations I visited, a quiet stream of voters trickled
in to cast their ballots. Some of the commission chairmen appeared keen
and ambitious, assuring me that there would be the requisite 50% turnout,
and that the "peak hour" would be later in the day. Others
told me that if half their precinct showed up they would be very surprised.
Apparently, the government had issued a decree making it a criminal
offense to organize a boycott, but perhaps some people would just boycott
in a disorganized fashion by staying home.
Old
people ambled into polling stations and complained that they couldn’t
find where they were supposed to vote because the names of the streets
had all been changed (Lermontov Street, for example, named after the
legendary Russian writer of A Hero’s Tale, had been changed to
"Dzhokar Dudayev Street"). Many complained that they didn’t
understand the questions. Younger commission workers told me that the
people casting ballots, especially the older ones "had no idea
what they were voting for," and that a lot of people wandered into
the polling stations to discover for the first time what was going on
there. But other than this, no one seemed very distressed.
Ballot-stuffing
or blatant skullduggery weren’t much in evidence during the outburst
of popular love. So the fact that there were never more than two observers
in any polling station, and usually only one (typically from the Lviv
regional government or some obscure political party with no seats in
the Rada), probably didn’t matter. Often, when I asked where the observers
were, I was told: "Oh, we have one. He should be back in a while."
When I asked some of the chairmen what they thought of the Lviv regional
government’s refusal to register the Communist Party as a participant
on the referendum commissions, they usually got up very close to me
and said, quietly, that there weren’t any Communists in the region to
speak of.
I
wasn’t quite able to decipher the Ukrainian questions on the ballot
sheets, but several people told me they were confusingly worded. Also,
the procedure for voting "Yes" was to put an "X"
in the "No" box, and vice versa. But this may not have mattered.
In many places, commission members told me that when voters were confused
about the voting procedure, the commission chairmen took care of this
problem by simply explaining to them how to vote.
At
about 3:00 pm I was sitting and talking to some commission workers,
and the chairman came into the room and switched on the television.
The head of Ukraine’s Central Election Commission (CEC) was making a
special announcement that already ten of Ukraine’s regions had finished
voting. I thought I detected sniggering in unison among my companions,
including the chairman, but I may have imagined it. A look at my notes
indicated that as of 1:00 PM, a total of 223 people had voted in that
precinct out of a total of 2,641. At about 3:20 PM, a commission chairman
loudly announced that according to the CEC, already half of the population
of Ukraine had voted.
In
the evening, when I watched the ballot papers being counted in a polling
station in central Lviv, the commission workers separated the "Yes"
and "No" votes into separate piles. By the time it was all
over, 995 valid votes had been cast out of a total of 2,386 on the voter
list for the precinct. This meant that 77 people had voted there every
hour. I felt somehow cheated that I’d missed the rush, as if I’d been
deprived of the day’s excitement. I never saw more than two or three
voters enter every five minutes anywhere. Even so, the total of votes
cast was well shy of 50%. I considered the possibility that I may have
picked a dud polling station in a precinct inhabited by atypically jaded
voters who had abstained from fulfilling their civic duty.
The
"Yes" votes won the day overwhelmingly at my polling station.
An old man who had been observing all day there pulled me aside to tell
me "the people had been tricked." The regime would "falsify
everything," he said, and he had already resigned himself to the
worst. Ukraine was "finished," because the country had "no
leaders." Evidently he was out of step with the overall atmosphere
of popular love.
DEMOCRACY
WINS THE DAY
When
all was done, amid the din of the commission workers breaking out the
vodka and shot glasses, I thought I sensed a collective mood that the
result had been preordained. But this may have been my imagination.
All that was left to do was to have a drink, a smoke, and a few sandwiches
with the polling station workers.
Official
figures showed that in three regions adjacent to Lviv, the turnout was
96.77%, 88.43%, and 87.24%. Lviv itself had recorded a turnout of 82.27%.
I must have just been in the wrong places at the wrong times. When I
checked with a colleague from the British Helsinki Human Rights Group,
who had been observing in Kiev and several villages in central Ukraine,
he said voting had been slow in every polling station he visited. Yet
Kiev region recorded a 78.9% turnout. We must have stumbled at random
into pockets of voter apathy, while all around us Ukrainians were flocking
to the polls in droves.
I
remembered when I had arrived at the Central Election Commission the
day before the referendum to pick up my observer card. I was told I
was the last foreign observer to be accredited. The number on my card
was 18. Neither the OSCE nor the Council of Europe had sent any observers
to the referendum. Without any OSCE or Council of Europe reports to
read, I had to judge the legitimacy of the referendum by choosing between
my own observations and instincts, and the official announcements of
the tinted-spectacled chairman of the Ukrainian CEC. Obviously, I went
with the CEC chairman.
The
referendum was a model of democracy. It just wasn’t the model that the
Council of Europe wanted. I understood fully why, on the eve of the
referendum, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had rushed to Kiev,
having changed her itinerary to get there ahead of Russian President
Vladimir Putin. She expressed her support for the referendum, and urged
Kuchma to continue the "reforms." The immediate complaints
of Oleksandr Moroz, leader of the Socialist Party, that the outcome
had been planned in advance, were just so much hot air. The foreign
envoy of the greatest democracy in the world had already put her stamp
of approval on the referendum – "in advance."
Moroz
said the referendum results couldn’t be implemented without a resolution
from the Rada, but Kuchma behaved like a leader and insisted that the
results would have the force of law. If anything was to be done for
the millions of ordinary Ukrainians – trudging through their day-to-day
lives trying to scrape together enough money for a few loaves of bread
– clearly the Beloved Leader would have to take power into his own hands.
Many
Ukrainians have told me that without the gas pipeline running through
their republic from Russia to the West, Ukraine would have no money
at all. They tell me that the few "private gas companies"
– set up by government bigwigs to punch holes in the pipeline and siphon
out gas for profit – are by far the biggest moneymakers in the whole
country. Russia is not happy about this, as one might imagine, and has
been planning to construct a new pipeline through Belarus to the north.
Some Ukrainians say this will kill the Ukrainian economy, which is based
on the illicit sucking of gas.
Interestingly,
one of the earliest reform plans of the new reform-minded Ukrainian
Prime Minister, Viktor Yushchenko (whose newly-formed party is aptly
named "Reform and Order"), has been in the gas sector. He
has put a dynamic woman in the office of Vice Premier for the Energy
Market, Yuliya Tymoshenko. Ms. Tymoshenko was formerly president of
a private gas company, United Energy Systems of Ukraine (UES), and the
agenda for reform of the gas sector now appears to involve increased
state control. UES’s annual turnover in 1996 reached $10 billion under
the close patronage of former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko. Unfortunately,
Mr. Lazarenko is currently incarcerated in San Francisco.
HOPE
FOR A BETTER FUTURE
The
Ukrainians taught me a saying when I first visited the country in 1992:
"Hope dies last." Hope may have started dying in Ukraine when
George Bush gave his "Chicken Kiev" speech in 1991 before
a crowd of several hundred thousand in the capital, urging the Ukrainians
not to be too "emotional" about independence. The current
government of my own country obviously tried to turn that legacy around
by endorsing a process that could give Ukrainians hope for a better
future. And there is hope. Soon, Ukrainians may be able to let
go of their collective agony as their history and national aspirations
disappear down the memory hole of the New World Party. In the words
of Bill Clinton: "I still believe in a place called ...
Hope."
