1998: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

A very long year of Rada elections

Ukrainian politics in the first half of 1998 was dominated, or perhaps more precisely paralyzed, by elections to the Verkhovna Rada. Even though those elections were held on March 29, the newly elected legislative body did not pass a single legislative act for another three months as its eight political factions maneuvered to pick a parliamentary leadership.

The Communist Party of Ukraine received nearly 25 percent of the vote in Ukraine's first attempt at forming a national legislature based on a new election law that called for half of its national deputies to be elected according to the old majoritarian system and the other half in a vote on a list of political parties.

In the old system, also dubbed "first past the post," the Verkhovna Rada's 450 seats were filled by candidates in 450 electoral districts who received an absolute majority of the vote in each district. When no one candidate obtained 50 percent plus one, a second round of voting was held until a candidate received a majority. In the 1994 elections this led to a situation in which many electoral districts required three or four rounds of voting to elect a parliamentary representative.

In some electoral districts, mostly in Kyiv, deputies were never elected, because after a while voter apathy increased to the point that not enough voters were turning out to elect anybody.

In accordance with the new law, Ukraine's 450 electoral districts were reapportioned to make up 225 districts from which representatives would be directly elected. A candidate would win his district if he obtained a simple majority of all the ballots cast.

The other 225 seats in the Verkhovna Rada would consist of national deputies appointed from political parties, based on the proportion of the vote that the party received. To claim seats in the Parliament, a party would have to win a minimum of 4 percent of the electoral vote. Each voter made two choices, one for an electoral district representative, the other for a political party.

The Ukrainian electorate was faced with a rather daunting selection task because, on average, 28 candidates appeared on the ballot in each electoral district; in addition, there were 30 political parties on the party list.

The final results, announced by the Central Election Commission (CEC) on April 7, showed the Communists winning 84 of the Parliament's 225 seats in party voting; followed by the Rukh Party with 32; the Socialist/Peasant Party bloc with 29; the Green Party with a surprising 19; the National Democratic Party, closely aligned with President Leonid Kuchma, with a disappointing 17; the Hromada Party with 16; and the Socialist Democratic Party (United) and the Progressive Socialist Party with 14 each.

When these numbers were combined with the results of the single-mandate vote, the Communists had a total of 123 members elected; Rukh, 46; the Socialist-Peasant Party bloc, 34; National Democratic Party, 28; Hromada Party, 23; Green Party, 19; Social Democratic Party (United), 14; and Progressive Socialist Party, 14.

After the vote was in, Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko said that with their new "mandate" the Communists would begin the deconstruction of Ukraine's modest democratic and economic reforms, including changes to the Constitution, reduction in the powers of the presidency, and tightened control over foreign financial aid, the National Bank of Ukraine and commercial banks.

However, international analysts expressed the view that the status quo in Ukraine would remain, that the Verkhovna Rada would remain politically rudderless because no party or ideological bloc had a clear majority to implement its agenda. That theory would prove to be very accurate as the Verkhovna Rada had much difficulty fulfilling even its first routine task: the selection of a chairman.

Some national deputies and President Kuchma had opposed the new mixed electoral system, approved by the Verkhovna Rada in September 1997, because they said Ukraine's party system was not yet sufficiently evolved to allow voters an intelligent choice and that the law itself was poorly written.

It passed constitutional muster to some degree on February 26 when Ukraine's Constitutional Court allowed the law to stand even though, in a unanimous vote, it declared 21 provisions in the law unconstitutional.

Most notably, the country's highest constitutional authority declared that candidates cannot run simultaneously in both the single-mandate districts and on national party slates. However, that change would become effective only in the parliamentary elections of 2002.

The Constitutional Court sidestepped the most controversial aspect of the law that it was asked to review: whether a requirement that a party must attain at least 4 percent of the electoral vote to be represented is constitutionally acceptable. The court ruled that the issue is a political matter for the Verkhovna Rada to decide and left the 4 percent threshold in place.

The election results caused some controversy as well. Although official observers from such international organizations as the European Commission, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe gave Ukraine's parliamentary elections an overall passing grade, they noted that the Odesa regional elections were marred by incidents of violence, arrests and actions against candidates, and abuses of public office.

In the key race, in the city of Odesa, Mayor Eduard Hurvits was defeated by oblast leader Ruslan Bodelan in a contentious election that was marked by the murder of several politicians and charges of financial improprieties by both sides.

Ukraine's Central Election Commission said it would conduct its own investigation into the way elections were held in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, where the Hromada Party, led by Dnipropetrovsk-born former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, received some 37 percent of the election vote, while mustering only about 4 percent in the rest of Ukraine. Several political parties expressed doubts regarding the political objectivity of the regional electoral commission of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.

In Kyiv as well some election results were questioned, this time by those who went down to defeat. However, the CEC dismissed several grievances, stating that although some infractions of election law might have occurred, they were not substantial enough to have affected election outcomes.

The CEC did invalidate one result: the victory of former Minister of Justice Serhii Holovatyi, who responded to the action by proclaiming it "politically motivated." Mr. Holovatyi had become a pariah in the Kuchma administration because of statements criticizing the president for failing to implement an anti-corruption program that Mr. Holovatyi had formulated as justice minister. Mr. Holovatyi was dismissed from his ministerial post when the president appointed Valerii Pustovoitenko the new prime minister in the summer of 1997.

Once the general election season was over, the newly elected national deputies were to get down to the business of legislating, but first they had to elect their own leadership - which in this Parliament, with its fundamentally divided ideological composition, resulted in a second season of voting.

It took eight weeks of debate and 20 rounds of voting, during which some 90 candidates were presented, before the national legislature elected the controversial Oleksander Tkachenko of the Peasant Party as its chairman.

The biggest hurdle that the Verkhovna Rada had to overcome was the ideological split that divides the legislative body almost equally between leftist and democratic forces.

That the two sides would have a tough time working together should have become evident to all even after the first meeting of the newly elected Ukrainian Parliament on May 12. It took on a circus-like atmosphere when Communists, offended by the fact that Slava Stetsko of the right-wing Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists read the oath of office, turned their backs on the podium while repeating the pledge and later walked out.

Mrs. Stetsko, 78, whose husband was a leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists that fought Soviet Communists in an insurgency during and after World War II, had been given the honor of reading the oath - one allowed her by the Constitution as the Verkhovna Rada's oldest member.

Next, the election of a chairman became mired in controversy even before the first vote was taken. Four centrist political factions, the Rukh Party, the National Democratic Party, the Green Party and the Social Democratic Party (United) put forth a proposal that the chairman should be elected in a package with both deputy chairs. They declared at the time that, until such a proposal was voted upon by the full parliamentary body, they would abstain from any vote on the chair position.

Realizing that it did not have the votes to put one of their own in the leadership chair, the temporary centrist coalition hoped to work out a deal with the left in which it could deny leftist forces a sweep of the three leadership posts.

But the left, which included the Communists, the Socialist-Peasant bloc and the Hromada Party, believed that it could take the chairmanship without the need to agree on a leadership slate and declined to cooperate with the democratic forces.

After six rounds of voting - during which the centrist bloc abstained four times, and leftist leaders such as Communist Party leader Symonenko and Socialist Party leader Oleksander Moroz, chairman of the last Verkhovna Rada, went down to defeat all six times - it became apparent that a compromise candidate needed to be found.

Although Mr. Symonenko came within five votes of being elected in the eighth round, still no consensus had emerged on how a chairman was to be elected in a Verkhovna Rada split almost evenly along ideological lines.

To search for a consensus candidate and to break the logjam caused by too many nominees, the parliamentary body did agree to form a conciliatory committee to propose candidates agreed upon by representatives of the eight parliamentary factions. The legislators decided that a single candidate's name would be placed into nomination, alternately one from the left and one from the right.

The agreement broke down after Mr. Moroz of the Socialist Party was nominated out of sequence two rounds later. Thirteen rounds into the marathon effort the most prominent leaders had been nominated and rejected - many of them repeatedly.

On June 18, after seven weeks and 13 attempts to elect a Parliament chairman, and with no end in sight to the process, President Kuchma announced to the nation in a televised address that he would take the initiative and would govern by presidential decree until the Verkhovna Rada untangled itself from its political paralysis and once again began to legislate.

He said that all of his decrees, which he explained would be mostly of an economic character to stem a developing economic crisis, would be subject to Verkhovna Rada approval post facto.

In the four months since the previous Verkhovna Rada had adjourned, not a single substantial legislative act had been passed. Earlier, the president had alluded to the possibility of dismissing the Parliament if it did not get its house in order, and fast.

The political division in the Verkhovna Rada, seemingly oblivious to critical public opinion, continued as all nominations were either beaten into the ground or withdrawn in six more rounds of voting.

Then, on July 7, Peasant Party leader Oleksander Tkachenko, who had failed to receive a majority of votes after having been nominated several times previously, received the support of 232 national deputies to win the election.

Although no one would officially confirm, the general belief is that members of the National Democratic Party and the Social Democratic Party (United) also threw their support to Mr. Tkachenko.

Political experts said after the vote that a tacit agreement had been reached with leaders of the two parties and the Kuchma administration to end the parliamentary paralysis and vote in Mr. Tkachenko. The day before Mr. Tkachenko's election, a Cabinet of Ministers decree authorized to restructuring of a $75 million debt that Land and People Agri-Industrial Association, a company held by Mr. Tkachenko, owed to the government. The debt was the result of a default of a government-guaranteed loan issued by Citicorp to Land and People in 1993. The debt restructuring in effect canceled whatever the company owed the government.

Three days later the Verkhovna Rada approved a presidium and 22 committee chairs as proposed by Mr. Tkachenko. Adam Martyniuk, a member of the Communist faction, was elected first vice-chairman, and Viktor Medvedchuk of the Social Democratic (United) faction was elected second vice-chairman.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, December 27, 1998, No. 52, Vol. LXVI

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