Leftist forces prevail in election of Rada chairman (07/12/98)

Leftist forces prevail in election of Rada chairman

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - After nearly two months of accusations, negotiations and bickering, Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada finally settled on a chairman to lead it.

Oleksander Tkachenko, the first deputy chair during the previous convocation of the Verkhovna Rada and a controversial figure who has been investigated for fraud, received the support of 232 national deputies, six more than the required 226, to end an eightweek marathon that required 20 rounds of voting on some 90 candidates.

The July 7 election of Mr. Tkachenko, a leader of the Leftist Center faction of the Verkhovna Rada and a member of the Peasant Party, gives the leftist forces a clear victory in the battle to appoint a chairman, and will allow them to control the Verkhovna Rada Presidium and committee chairmanships.

Ivan Chyzh, another prominent member of the Leftist Center faction, called the election of Mr. Tkachenko a victory for the people. "Tkachenko is a person of the land," said Mr. Chyzh. "He will not look to the upper echelons of power for guidance, but will represent the people."

After 19 attempts to elect a chairman, the person who presides over the plenary sessions of the Parliament and has much influence on the development of its agenda, the logjam broke after the radical Progressive Socialist Party, led by the mercurial National Deputy Natalia Vitrenko, threw its 16 votes in support of the Peasant Party leader.

Although Mr. Tkachenko also received almost unanimous support from the Communist faction, the Leftist Center faction (the Socialist Party and the Peasant Party) and the Hromada faction, Ms. Vitrenko said her party's votes were the difference.

"Our votes were the golden key," said Ms. Vitrenko, whose party has bickered with fellow leftists from the Socialist and Communist factions over the purity of their ideologies ever since she broke ranks with the former to establish her own party. "We were never going to support [Oleksander] Moroz [the Socialist leader] or [Petro] Symonenko [the Communist leader]. But Tkachenko suited us because of his position on land. The land unites Ukrainians. We do not want to give it to Canadians, or Germans, or Brazilians," said Ms. Vitrenko.

However some political experts have said that the Social Democrats (United) faction broke with a temporary centrist coalition to make the majority. The Social Democrats (United), the Greens, Rukh and the National Democrats had worked together unsuccessfully to elect a centrist to the top spot in the Parliament by calling for a package vote on the three leadership posts of the Parliament Presidium

Leonid Kravchuk of the Social Democrat s (United) faction said his faction did not break from the coalition and explained that 16 of the faction's 25 members had voted against the Tkachenko nomination, including himself.

"You cannot say that we supported the election of the chairman, although some individuals of our faction may have voted for Mr. Tkachenko," said Mr. Kravchuk. "I was told that no agreements were made regarding Tkachenko or any of the deputy chairs."

Because the leftist coalition along with Hromada only carries a total of 213 votes, either non-aligned deputies or some members of the four centrist factions had to have crossed over in order for Mr. Tkachenko to the 226 votes needed for a majority.

Serhii Naboka, director of Elections 98, a Verkhovna Rada monitoring group, explained that no centrist is ready to admit that he supported Mr. Tkachenko. "It's not politically expedient. He is not the most popular man among them," according to Mr. Naboka. He suggested that even members of the center-right Rukh faction and the pro-Kuchma National Democratic Party may have cast their ballots for the new chairman at the request of Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma.

Although no one is saying anything officially, a viewpoint has emerged among political experts that President Kuchma gave his tacit agreement for the election of Mr. Tkachenko. Some are looking to a Cabinet of Ministers decree issued the day before the election, which restructured the $75 million debt that Mr. Tkachenko's organization, Land and People Agri-Industrial Association, owes the government, as evidence that a back-room agreement had already been made.

The man who won the seat credited himself and fate for the victory. "Among the most deserving, fate picked me," said Mr. Tkachenko from the podium of the session hall after the results were announced.

Mr. Tkachenko, who is an agronomist and was minister for agrarian policy and foods of the Ukrainian SSR until 1991, said during a press conference the day after his election that he would not support any law that would allow the selling and buying of land. "A move to sell land is a move against the state, against the nation," said Mr. Tkachenko.

In a wide-ranging exchange with journalists, Mr. Tkachenko also expressed the view that the Cabinet of Ministers should be appointed and dismissed by the Verkhovna Rada, that perhaps amendments need to be made to the Constitution, that Ukraine should develop its relations with Moscow and NATO based on its own needs and interests, and that the IMF cannot help Ukraine develop a strong economy.

"I cannot name a single country that built a strong economy on money loaned by the IMF," said Mr. Tkachenko. "These countries have only developed debt that they will be paying back for decades."

The new chairman can speak with some expertise on the subject of bad loans and debt. His organization, Land and People Agri-Industrial Association, owes the Ukrainian government 150 million hrv ($75 million) from a line of credit extended by Citicorp, which it failed to repay. Because the money was underwritten by Ukraine's Export Import bank, the money came from Ukraine's meager coffers.

After an investigation in 1995 by the Procurator General's Office, Land and People was billed for the money, a debt that now has been restructured with the Cabinet of Ministers decree.

Vice-chairs still to be elected

With a chairman finally in the driver's seat, next on the agenda for the Verkhovna Rada was to elect two vice-chairs, and 22 committee heads in order to complete the organizational work of the Parliament.

After a day of haggling among the factions during which an agreement was reached that the committee leadership posts would be divvied up proportionally to the numerical strengths of each faction, Chairman Tkachenko, as is his due as the leader of the Parliament, nominated Adam Martyniuk of the Communist faction and Viktor Medvedchuk of the Social Democrats (United) faction for the first and second vice-chairs, respectively.

New accusations of political deceit, something that marked the two-month election process, also began anew when no members of Rukh, the Greens or the Progressive Socialists were nominated for committee chairmanships.

Progressive Socialist Vitrenko was particularly vexed that her faction's support of Mr. Tkachenko had given it nothing. "Now they have locked us out. This is political banditry," said Ms. Vitrenko.

Nominees for the two vice-chair posts and the 22 committee chairmanships must be approved by a majority of the Verkhovna Rada, a process that may again take some time, according to Chairman Tkachenko. "I believe that the election of the vice-chairs and the committees will be a no less difficult task," said Mr. Tkachenko at his news conference.

He stated that, nonetheless, he believes the Verkhovna Rada will in the end be an effective legislative body. "This Parliament is capable, and I think that this will be shown by its work. It found a way out of this crisis, and I believe that it will be able to address the economic troubles of this country," Mr. Tkachenko said.