NEWS ANALYSIS: Kuchma prepares for the elections (03/23/97)

NEWS ANALYSIS

Kuchma prepares for the elections

by Taras Kuzio

Recent government reshuffles in Ukraine are not part of a usual clear-out, but reflect President Leonid Kuchma's three-pronged strategy to prepare for the upcoming 1998 parliamentary and 1999 presidential elections.

Between now and these elections, the main preoccupation of President Kuchma will remain twofold: first, to prevent a victory by the left; second, to ensure his own election to a second term in the presidential elections. In September 1996 President Kuchma announced that he would run for a second term. Many observers saw that as a warning to Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko not to use his office to also campaign for presidential office.

The first prong of President Kuchma's pre-election strategy was clearly outlined in late 1996. A new Ministry of Information was created, headed by Kuchma loyalist Zynovii Kulyk, replacing the Ministry for Press and Information. The newly named minister said that one of the most important tasks of the new ministry would be to coordinate the work of the state mass media as well as the state's official position on domestic and foreign policy issues. The ministry, therefore, will reflect the official position of the executive authority. The presidential decree, dated November 13, 1996, also talked of "making more effective use of the state mass media." The question is: for whom?

This move by President Kuchma had many motives - both domestic and external. One of these was to ensure that the executive controlled the state mass media during the parliamentary and presidential election campaigns. This particularly referred to the State Committee for Television and Radio, which Mr. Kulyk previously headed. The newly established State Information Agency (DINAU) is to be subordinated to the new ministry and ensure the wide circulation within the mass media of the executive's point of view.

The second reason would be to, in Minister Kulyk's words, prevent "Russia's expansion into Ukraine's information space." President Kuchma clearly recalls that during the 1994 presidential elections the Russian mass media backed him against the allegedly "nationalist" incumbent Leonid Kravchuk. In the 1999 presidential elections, the Russian mass media are highly unlikely to back President Kuchma whom they already accuse of blocking the full normalization of Russian-Ukrainian relations.

The second prong of pre-election strategy concerns political issues. In December of last year, Dmytro Tabachnyk, a long-time close ally who was publicly unpopular, was removed as head of the presidential administration and replaced by Kharkiv Mayor Yevhen Kushnariov. The promotion of Mr. Kushnariov signalled that President Kuchma had ditched his 1994 allies in the Inter-Regional Bloc of Reforms (IRBR), which he had helped establish in 1994. The IRBR would not have won Mr. Kuchma the 1999 elections. It has not succeeded in expanding into a popular political party, it is regionally based, it has an unpopular leader (presidential adviser Volodymyr Hryniov) and is perceived as too "pro-Russian" and pro-Eurasian.

Mr. Kushnariov is both a Russian and is not linked to the so-called "Dnipropetrovsk mafia" that dominates the government. Therefore, he can bring in the eastern Ukrainian vote without being accused of being one of Prime Minister Lazarenko's Donetsk political clan. Mr. Kushnariov is also head of New Ukraine, a social democratic and liberal leaning political bloc and a leading member of the People's Democratic Party, one of the main political groups in New Ukraine. Mr. Kushnariov was also the former head of the Association of Ukrainian Cities, the body that unites largely pro-reform, therefore pro-Kuchma, mayors.

At the annual congress of New Ukraine held in February, Mr. Kushnariov defined the bloc's role as organizing public support for the acceleration of reform against leftist opposition by backing President Kuchma. The president clearly intends to use New Ukraine as his vehicle to unite pro-reformists into a bloc to counter the left in the 1998 parliamentary elections and to pursue his bid for re-election in the 1999 presidential elections. New Ukraine will create a "broad political coalition - from social democrats to republicans" in support of President Kuchma's reform program to counter what he perceives as his greatest threat from the left.

Mr. Kuchma hopes that New Ukraine will win him the election in eastern and southern Ukraine, while his overtures to Rukh aim to win him the election in western and central Ukraine (including the city of Kyiv). On February 21, this pre-election coalition-building went one step further when a presidential decree established a Political Council attached to the presidency. The decree stated that the council aims to take the views of Ukraine's political forces into account when state policy is being decided. Oleksander Yemets, a leading member of the People's Democratic Party and New Ukraine, was appointed secretary of the Political Council.

Despite the provisions within the presidential decree, the council invited only centrist, pro-reformist political parties to join it. These included political parties ranging from the center-left (Social Democrats, the Greens, the Agrarians and the Labor Party) to centrists (People's Democratic Party) and liberals (the Inter-Regional Bloc of Reforms, the Democratic and Liberal Parties). Rukh was invited to join as well, but so far has snubbed this presidential offer of open collaboration with President Kuchma.

Thus, the Political Council brings together social, liberal and national democrats -- three ideological tendencies that the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Volodymyr Horbulin, believes are all simultaneously evident in President Kuchma's policies.

The third prong of Mr. Kuchma's policies has been forced upon him by outside and domestic pressure. Pressure from international financial institutions had caused Mr. Kuchma to combat widespread corruption in his government, excessive government intervention in private foreign investment and assistance, bureaucracy, and a confusing and punishing tax system. Domestically, despite good economic indicators, the government had failed to check the growth of wage arrears which had reached $2.3 billion, while the GNP has continued to decline.

With international financial institutions threatening to withhold further assistance for Ukraine's program of economic transformation and with social discontent mounting over wage arrears and underemployment, President Kuchma had no choice but to purge the government in an attempt to find scapegoats. All of these factors, after all, would affect his chances for re-election and give public support to the left, which was having success in preventing the Verkhovna Rada from approving this year's budget and tax reforms.

Only time will tell if Prime Minister Lazarenko will become another scapegoat. President Kuchma may calculate that it is better to keep him in his current position, where he can take the blame for Ukraine's economic crisis, than force him to resign, which would allow him to openly campaign as a presidential candidate. President Kuchma's two other potential challengers come from the left (Oleksander Moroz, chairman of the Verkhovna Rada and leader of the Socialist Party) and from his own political constituency (former Prime Minister Yevhen Marchuk). But, so far, of these four, only Mr. Kuchma has declared his candidacy in the 1999 presidential elections.

Taras Kuzio is a research fellow at the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Birmingham and editor of Ukraine Business Review.

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