ANALYSIS: Tkachenko's announcement leaves leftists more divided (06/13/99)

ANALYSIS

Tkachenko's announcement leaves leftists more divided

by Jan Maksymiuk
RFE/RL Poland, Belarus and Ukraine Report

With Verkhovna Rada Chairman Oleksander Tkachenko's May 29 announcement of his intention to run in the October presidential elections, the political climate in Ukraine has heated up considerably. Some analysts believe that Mr. Tkachenko may be the most serious challenge to President Leonid Kuchma's re-election bid.

Despite widespread speculation in the Ukrainian media to the contrary, Mr. Tkachenko had been assuring everyone until the very last moment that he would not run. His about-face, he says, was prompted by President Kuchma's recent anti-Parliament rhetoric about "dissolving the Verkhovna Rada" the day after his re-election. "As parliamentary chairman, I must take appropriate decisions [in such circumstances]," Mr. Tkachenko emphasized.

Mr. Tkachenko's candidacy was formally proposed by the Peasant Party of Ukraine (PPU) at its congress on May 29. "We shall win. Truth is with us. Millions of people back us," PPU Chairman Serhii Dovhan told the enthusiastic delegates.

Some right-leaning newspapers have ironically commented that not long before the congress Mr. Dovhan had been promoting Petro Symonenko, presidential candidate of the Communist Party. Those same newspapers recalled that Mr. Dovhan's party had entered into an alliance with the Socialist Party in last year's parliamentary elections. Now the PPU candidate will compete against Socialist Party leader Oleksander Moroz in the presidential polls.

The fourth major leftist hopeful is the sharp-tongued populist Nataliia Vitrenko, chairwoman of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine. So far, Ukrainian polls show she is leading the presidential race, with a backing of 17 to 20 percent. Some observers believe that Ms. Vitrenko's bid is strongly supported by the presidential administration in order to split the leftist vote and facilitate Mr. Kuchma's re-election.

Before Mr. Tkachenko announced his presidential bid, President Kuchma's biggest challenge had appeared to be preventing Mr. Moroz from reaching the second round of voting. Mr. Kuchma seems to have succeed in reaching that goal, since Mr. Moroz has been unable to reach an understanding with Ms. Vitrenko and Mr. Symonenko to set up a leftist election coalition. Moreover, enmity between Ukraine's Communists and Socialists has recently intensified, and neither side seems disposed to back the other in a possible runoff against the incumbent.

The emergence of Mr. Tkachenko has changed the electoral prospects of leftist candidates. Presumably, it has also led President Kuchma to reconsider who his main rival will be in the presidential campaign.

On the one hand, it appears that Mr. Tkachenko's bid has weakened the potential of the leftist anti-Kuchma electorate by splitting the left-wing votes still further. Mr. Tkachenko, a 60-year-old career Communist with links to the agricultural sector, can count on votes in the countryside in both eastern and western Ukraine. However, those votes will not be enough to secure him a play-off with President Kuchma, let alone victory. Therefore, he will need votes from the traditional Communist/Socialist electorate.

On the other hand, if Mr. Tkachenko were to beat Mr. Moroz, Mr. Symonenko and Ms. Vitrenko in the first round, he would be the most dangerous rival for President Kuchma in the runoff. It is almost certain that the defeated leftist candidates would ask their voters to cast ballots for Mr. Tkachenko. Despite political and personal animosities that prevent them from supporting one another, Mr. Symonenko, Mr. Moroz and Ms.Vitrenko strongly dislike the incumbent, and that dislike is shared by their electorate.

To face Mr. Tkachenko in the second round of voting would be the worst-case scenario for Mr. Kuchma. The best would be to compete with Mr. Symonenko and to deal with him the way Russian President Boris Yeltsin handled Communist Party leader Gennadii Zyuganov in the 1996 presidential elections in Russia: namely, by referring to the "red threat" and mobilizing votes under the slogan, "Better the incumbent than the communists again."

The irony of Ukraine's 1999 presidential polls is that it was President Kuchma and his aides who helped Mr. Tkachenko gain the post of Parliament chairman in 1998 and thus become a major political figure. Their aim was to remove former Rada Chairman Mr. Moroz from the spotlight of Ukrainian politics and thus to neutralize, as was widely believed, Mr. Kuchma's biggest presidential rival.

Now it looks as though fate has played a nasty trick on President Kuchma, pitting him against yet another Rada chairman.

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