ANALYSIS: Kuchma and the politics of re-election (08/03/97)

ANALYSIS

Kuchma and the politics of re-election

by Markian Bilynskyj

The general expectation is that, following its summer recess, the Verkhovna Rada will focus almost exclusively on next March's constitutionally mandated parliamentary elections, and that this re-election imperative will inevitably impact its legislative output, thereby further impeding reforms. This thesis was reiterated by President Leonid Kuchma in a major address on June 27 commemorating the first anniversary of the Constitution.

The implied corollary of the above argument is that the executive branch - principally the presidency - has more often been sinned against than sinner. However, it was actually President Kuchma himself who introduced the re-election factor into an already complex Ukrainian political equation when, in September 1996, he quite unexpectedly announced that he would seek re-election. Since then, almost every major initiative has been examined by both sides with at least half an eye as to its potential electoral impact.

Despite the administration's often justified accusations concerning the Rada's antics, it has lately become very difficult to separate President Kuchma's own re-election efforts from any declaratively objective effort to address Ukraine's chronic problems. This is particularly true where they intersect with the ambitions of other elements within the leadership elite.

Last year's relatively successful macro-economic stabilization has not translated into the much-hoped-for improvement at the critical micro level. The lack of palpable progress has exacerbated a host of negative socioeconomic tendencies - principal among which is the seemingly intractable problem with state salary and pension arrears - that with parliamentary and local government elections rapidly approaching threatens to create a highly damaging momentum when President Kuchma tries to renew his own mandate in October 1999.

Thus, over the past couple of months the administration has been putting into place a political strategy to facilitate the kind of economic reforms that can, indeed must, produce swift results. One of the key elements is a wholesale restructuring and disciplining of the government to be presided over by a prime minister familiar with the bureaucracy. Another is the centralization of economic strategy planning within the Supreme Economic Council (SEC). The goal is to facilitate the passage and implementation of a whole series of measures, including a package of "urgent measures" for the acceleration of economic reforms. The final and most controversial component, revealed in the June 27 speech, requires a postponement of the parliamentary and local government elections for another year to allow the Verkhovna Rada time to pass all of these measures.

Earlier this year, President Kuchma cultivated an image of an observer rather than participant in the wrangling over the budget between the Rada and the government of then Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko. Contemporary realities within the executive branch - the Constitution and an impending law on the Cabinet of Ministers notwithstanding - are such that the president remains relatively free to take the credit for any government successes while generally avoiding the blame for any shortcomings. Essentially, therefore, he can choose to exercise authority largely without responsibility. Thus, during his annual March report to the Rada, President Kuchma publicly absolved himself of any responsibility for the budgetary deadlock and the resultant socio-economic consequences while excoriating the government, the prime minister, and the Rada.

Such an approach is tenable only over the short run because ultimately the president cannot avoid responsibility for his nominee's failure to deliver. President Kuchma finally admitted as much in his June 27 speech when he stated that he had to shoulder some responsibility for the state of affairs in the country, specifically through his handling of the "kadrove pytannia" (literally, "the staffing question"). This can be interpreted as referring principally to his choices for prime minister that have so far proved less than successful.

The July 16 appointment of Valerii Pustovoitenko as prime minister - the fifth acting or permanent head of government during the Kuchma presidency - reflects President Kuchma's latest attempt finally to get the "kadrove pytannia" right, this time within the context of a fluid pre-electoral political environment.

In contrast to his predecessor, a powerful individual who attempted to expand the prerogatives of the office of prime minister, Mr. Pustovoitenko is a close personal friend of President Kuchma; an unassuming, experienced bureaucrat with, critically, no constituency apart from the president himself. Theoretically, his appointment should reduce appreciably the potential for friction inherent in the presidency's relationship with the prime minister's office.

Moreover, although he was approved by literally the slimmest of margins, those Rada deputies who opposed Mr. Pustovoitenko's candidacy had nothing as such against the nominee himself, save for the simple fact that he is transparently little more than an extension of President Kuchma's political persona. This at least offers the prospect of a less confrontational relationship between the Cabinet of Ministers and the Verkhovna Rada (although being so closely associated with President Kuchma could actually condemn the new prime minister to a largely peripheral role).

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, having worked for several years as the minister of the Cabinet of Ministers, essentially the government's chief bureaucrat, Mr. Pustovoitenko could also prove more successful than any of his predecessors in disciplining the bureaucracy through systematic reform. Indeed, it appears that this might well be his principal - arguably sole - responsibility. Ideas for reforming the bureaucracy are to be generated by an independent Commission for Administrative Reform under former President Leonid Kravchuk.

Mr. Pustovoitenko's appointment thus represents a tacit admission by President Kuchma that the bureaucracy is perhaps as much to blame as the Verkhovna Rada for the disappointing pace of reforms. Indeed, despite the often spectacular political pyrotechnics between the administration and the Verkhovna Rada, a case could be made that President Kuchma in general has had a much more constructive relationship with the Rada than with the bureaucracy, which has resisted all previous efforts - half-hearted at best - to reform it.

However, despite these personal and professional assets (or, more accurately perhaps, the lack of any obvious liabilities), there were some equally significant, broader, factors at work behind Mr. Pustovoitenko's appointment.

President Kuchma hesitated over whether, when and how to dismiss Prime Minister Lazarenko. One of the reasons for that hesitation is that, despite his numerous liabilities, Mr. Lazarenko was and remains influential within the Rada and in the regions - with everything that this implies in a pre-election climate. In his speech nominating Mr. Pustovoitenko, President Kuchma, after again admitting his staffing errors, said that "the dismissal of the prime minister was brought about primarily by the results of his work, which did not satisfy me. There were also moral issues which did not add to the authority of the head of government and began to damage the international image of the country." However, there is strong evidence suggesting that there was another important factor behind Mr. Lazarenko's dismissal and his successor's ascendancy. Indeed, it can even be seen as the proximate cause.

In early June, the National Democratic Party of Ukraine (NDPU) held its second congress during which its leader, Anatoliy Matviyenko, not only harshly criticized the Cabinet of Ministers but categorically called for Mr. Lazarenko's dismissal. In the days that followed, Mr. Matviyenko and other party spokesmen upped the ante by publicly declaring that should the president nominate one of the NDPU's nominees for the premiership, the NDPU would take full responsibility for his performance in office. The two names the NDPU eventually proposed were the former chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, Ivan Pliushch, and Mr. Pustovoitenko.

The NDPU is often referred to as "the party of power" or, by its detractors, as "the party with illusions of power" (even though the most accurate designation might be "genuine pretensions to power"). Apart from Mr. Pustovoitenko, its ranks include the following high level officials: President Kuchma's chief of staff, Yevhen Kushnariov; deputy chief of staff and former principal economic adviser to President Kuchma, Anatolii Halchynskyi; the deputy minister of the Cabinet of Ministers, Anatolii Tolstoukhov; the deputy chairman of the National Security Council and former chief adviser to the president, Oleksander Razumkov; the governor of the Bank of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko; the minister of the economy, Yurii Yekhanurov; the minister of information, Zinovii Kulyk; and Anatolii Kinakh, president of the powerful Ukrainian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, who was recently appointed by President Kuchma to head the newly created Interdepartmental Council on Strategic Privatization.

For some time now President Kuchma and the NDPU have been tentatively courting each other, while publicly denying this in the unconvincing fashion of two bashful teenagers denying the significance of having been caught embracing. However, if the NDPU - generally viewed as representing narrow, elite interests - is to provide the kind of party base President Kuchma is undoubtedly seeking, it must first substantially broaden its appeal and by extension its parliamentary representation. The swiftest way of achieving this, regardless of whether or not elections to the Rada are held on schedule, would be to have a government led by an NDPU member make tangible progress, specifically on the high-profile salary arrears issue. The gambit is risky, but not necessarily so for the individuals involved. President Kuchma has no formal associations with the NDPU and in the event of failure, the political careers of individual NDPU members are unlikely to suffer even as the development of the NDPU is set back. The potential pay-off for both sides, on the other hand, is self-evident.

Thus, given this NDPU factor, as well as his personal links to the president, Mr. Pustovoitenko's nomination makes sense. (Given the nature of the new prime minister's likely principal task, First Vice Prime Minister Vasyl Durdynets might have prevailed had his reputation in the Rada not been so thoroughly discredited following a botched attempt - whether instigated by the administration or by Mr. Lazarenko is not clear - to break the budget deadlock by removing the chairman of the Rada, Oleksander Moroz).

Among the speculations preceding Mr. Pustovoitenko's nomination and confirmation, the idea of a coalition government was broached quite frequently. Indeed, during times of crisis resorting to this form of governance has much to recommend it. However, the generally amorphous state of Ukrainian party politics, particularly within the Verkhovna Rada, effectively precludes this option on the formal level. Nevertheless, it is possible to view the Supreme Economic Council (SEC) as a de facto coalition government cobbled together to deal with the kinds of issues these bodies have historically been designed to address.

The SEC consists of 30 members: key government officials, former prime ministers, academics and 16 key Rada deputies - including Chairman Moroz. Following the July 17 inaugural meeting of the SEC, the acting secretary Mr. Halchynskyi insisted that the new body is simply an advisory and consultative council which cannot replace the government or the Rada. But the very nature of this "denial" merely strengthens the suspicion that, at minimum, the SEC is designed to fundamentally influence the work of these two bodies.

Thus, while the government is scheduled to discuss the issues the SEC reviewed in its first session, it is highly unlikely to come to its own separate conclusions over how reforms should proceed. Indeed, its role will likely focus on how to substantiate and then implement the decisions reached within the SEC, a critical but essentially administrative task for which the new prime minister is by character eminently suited; but one which allowed his predecessor plenty of latitude for (re)interpretation with, according to President Kuchma, all of the attendant negative consequences which prompted his eventual dismissal.

As regards policy matters, Prime Minister Pustovoitenko's government will deal with process rather than content - something which, theoretically, can only help intra-executive branch coordination and reforms as a whole.

As for the Verkhovna Rada, trying to co-opt its leadership and other key deputies by giving them a key role in what is effectively a decision-making process, should facilitate the passage through the Rada of the administration's reform package regardless of any pre-election theatrics that might be enacted on the floor of the chamber.

Creating strategic councils, like changing prime ministers, is nothing new to Ukrainian politics. And only time will tell whether this informal centralization, or perhaps more accurately centralization by invitation, will produce the desired results. But time is the one commodity that is in short supply. Administration officials estimate that passage and implementation of the package of urgent measures proposed by President Kuchma would require two years at minimum. And that, essentially, is the reason that during his June 27 speech President Kuchma declared his willingness to entertain the proposal to postpone the parliamentary and local government elections for a full year. (There is still some confusion over where the initiative originated. But under the circumstances it does not stretch the bounds of probability to suggest that the idea was born inside the administration and then presented by pro-presidential forces within the Rada for the president's "consideration"; altogether a much more subtle way for the guarantor of the Constitution to effectively announce that at least in one respect the fundamental law was a political hindrance rather than an asset.)

In a somewhat hackneyed, almost contrived manner, the president's Regional Council, which consists of the heads of the oblast level governments, began reporting spontaneous grass-roots support from citizens, groups and associations for postponing the elections, not least because the money "thus saved could then be used to settle state salary and pension debts."

On July 18, the last day of the Rada session, Vice Chairman Viktor Musiyaka proposed a motion that the Rada reconvene for two or three days commencing on August 28 to consider the arguments for amending the Constitution.

So far, the Rada's reaction to moving the elections has been mixed. Even some generally pro-presidential elements are skeptical. Crucially, however, Chairman Moroz has come out unequivocally against such a step. Quite understandably, having expedited Mr. Pustovoitenko's confirmation by the Rada, Mr. Moroz would be justified in perhaps feeling that further assisting President Kuchma's reform effort could become counterproductive to his own undoubted presidential ambitions. But clearly, any conclusion would ultimately depend on the Rada chairman's own assessment of where along the political continuum the currently all too fine dividing line between President Kuchma's re-election efforts and the objective requirements of Ukrainian reforms is located.

Markian Bilynskyj is director of the Pylyp Orlyk Institute, an independent public policy, research and information center located in Kyiv that is supported by the Washington-based U.S.-Ukraine Foundation.

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